something inside this heart has died (you're in ruins)
by entersomethingcleverhere
Summary: Army!AU: After a terrible tragedy, Dr. Felicity Smoak exiles herself to an Army hospital in Germany. Enter Command Sergeant Major Oliver Jonas, a handsome and charismatic soldier who lands in her care after an IED explosion. Between the two of them, there's enough tragedy to put those Ancient Greeks out of business. Part 1 of "21 Guns" series
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** First of all, major thanks to the olicityficbang group for coordinating this huge project. Second of all, I have such immense gratitude for Julie for cheerleading throughout the grueling writing process and screamlikeacanary and geniewithwifi for being such amazing betas. And a gigantic hug specifically for screamlikeacanary for the beautiful art and being really supportive of the story.

The update schedule for this story will be every other day. So look for chapter 2 on Dec. 22.

Hope you enjoy!

* * *

I couldn't remember the last time I wasn't awash in the scent of burning flesh.

By then it was just the norm. And sometimes it was even comforting. Sometimes it meant I knew where I was. I knew the source. I knew what to do. After all, I've always been a clutch player.

But most times it just fills me with dread.

"Felicity, they just got here."

I jumped to my feet and ran after Digg, chasing him through the maze-like hallways. Halfway to the pit doors, we came across a moving gurney, with a body wrapped in blankets. The combat medics had cleaned off his face as best as they could on the flight over here, but traces of dirt and grease and blood still remained, making it almost impossible to suss out his features.

"Give it to us," Digg said.

"CSM Oliver Jonas, 30 years old with wounds from an IED," the medic told us. "The thing went off and damaged his legs, but even after the explosion he spent an hour making sure the members in his squad were out of danger first. The resulting firefight also caused a few gunshot wounds. Most of the trauma is to his lower extremities, but he's also got some shrapnel in his torso. He's also got some graze wounds from bullets he took in the ensuing firefight. He's out of immediate danger, because we stopped the major bleeding in the field and during transport."

"Leaving us to patch up the rest," I finished for him.

"It's what y'all do best."

"How bad is the damage to his legs?" Digg asked as we steered the gurney around the corner.

"I couldn't tell for sure, but I think there's a good chance he'll get to keep them. He won't get to throw himself into a firefight after escaping an IED explosion for a while, but with some PT I think he can be back in the field in a year."

I shook my head. "Yeah, until he gets himself blown up again."

"Look, this guy's a hero," the medic said plainly. "His unit is still alive because of him. He's probably got a distinguished service cross coming for him in the future."

"Well let's make sure it isn't awarded posthumously then," Digg replied.

We had OR 5 prepared for his arrival. The anesthesiologists and OR nurses prepped Jonas' body for the surgery while Digg and I scrubbed. I closed my eyes and took several cleansing breaths. It would be the only clean air I'd get to breathe for the next few hours.

Once my lungs had sucked in as much pure oxygen as they could, I tied the mask over my face. Digg glanced over at me, his arms dripping from the scalding hot water. "Ready?" he asked.

I nodded, and together we walked into the OR.

The minute the surgery was over, one of the nurses poked her head into the scrub room. "Sergeant Jonas' commanding officer is on the phone. Who wants to take it?"

Digg and I exchanged sidelong glances. Then at the same time we turned to face each other, holding one fist in the air. Keeping eye contact with him, I counted, "One, two, three, shoot."

On the last count, two of his fingers shot out from his clenched fist while mine opened with my palm facing downward.

"Damn it," I muttered while Digg shot me a smug look. "That's like the third time in a row."

"You need the practice anyway."

"Easy for you to say," I retorted. "You speak the language. Instead I just ramble like an idiot and then I try to lighten the subject matter by making jokes which is always a terrible idea because it's like the prerequisite to get rid of your sense of humor the minute you become an officer, and — ugh."

"Yeah well this time remember not to make any jokes."

I grumbled incoherently as we walked out of the scrub room. Once we got to the nurse's station, I picked up the phone. "Dr. Smoak here."

"Smoak, this is Lieutenant Colonel Wilson," a gruff voice on the other end of answered. "How's Jonas?"

I took a deep breath. "He sustained major damage to his left leg in the explosion, but we managed to repair the fractures with titanium rods. We also stitched up the extensive shrapnel and graze wounds on his arms and torso. It's going to be a while before he's back to full mobility, but he should make a full recovery."

"How long?"

I paused. "Excuse me?"

"How long until he's made this full recovery? He's my right-hand man. He's the best marksman and my quickest soldier. I need him back here as soon as possible."

My grip around the phone tightened. Digg must have noticed the expression on my face as well because he reached over to place a comforting hand on my shoulder. I ignored it though.

"Jonas has sustained a great deal of trauma," I said as evenly as I could. "From what I read in his file he has five months left in his deployment, but I very much doubt he will recover in time to return to the battlefield."

"Dr. Smoak, that's simply an unacceptable answer," he growled. "I need him back here in Jalalabad by the end of this month and you will see to it that he recovers in that time."

I'd just had about enough of this bastard, and Digg could have squeezed my shoulder until he cut off circulation to my arm, but I wasn't going to hold my tongue any longer. I was cranky and tired and damn it, I needed to pee. Wilson caught me at a bad time.

"Sir, I understand that you're in need of Jonas' abilities out there, but I just spent the past ten hours making sure you won't have to tell his wife she's a widow or his children that they're orphans or his parents that they'll have to hang gold stars in their windows for the rest of their lives, and I will be damned if I'm going to send him back into battle before he's ready. Have I made myself perfectly clear?"

I didn't bother waiting for an answer. I slammed the phone down in anger and clenched my jaw as I glared into the wall, wishing it was Wilson's head and my eyes had the power to shoot lasers out of them.

"Well."

I sucked in a deep breath through my nostrils and turned my head toward Digg. His hand was still squeezing my shoulder, but there was that soft smile over his gentle features.

"What?"

"At least you didn't crack a joke."

I rolled my eyes and turned away. "I have a feeling he wouldn't have recognized a joke if it shot him with a mortar first." He slid over Jonas' chart and I made a couple of notes and signed my name. "Page me when he wakes up. If anyone asks where I am in the meantime, tell them I peed so hard that I fell into a black hole in the toilet and if they need me they're going to have to Matthew McConaughey the closest NASA spaceship themselves to get me back."

Digg chuckled. "Sure thing."

After I finished the notes in the chart, I made a beeline to the closest bathroom and when my bladder had felt sufficiently relieved, I trudged to the closest on-call room and fell on top of the bottom bunk bed with a loud thud. The board said I didn't have another surgery until six, meaning I had plenty of time to take a nap. And considering how little sleep I'd gotten recently, drifting off into dreamland the minute I closed my eyes should have been easy.

But it wasn't. Instead when I closed my eyes, all I could do was smell the burning flesh and feel the cold steel under my hands as I made stitch after stitch. They say if you're in the surgical game long enough, the stitches become muscle memory and you can do procedures in your sleep.

The thing is, trauma surgery isn't like that. The wounds all come from the same place, but they're always in different places on different bodies with different reactions, different solutions, different stitches and different strategies. I don't mind that part so much — it's why I went into trauma surgery in the first place. I've always enjoyed a good challenge and finding multiple answers to a single problem.

No, the part I hate is when the problem has no solution. When the organs go necrotic, when the infection spreads, or when no amount of electricity can save a stalling heart — that's the part that makes it difficult to sleep, no matter how many consecutive hours I've spent awake.

I turned over in the bed until I was staring at the bunk above me. Or at least I assumed it was the bunk above me, because the on-call room was pitch black, considering it was supposed to be a place where doctors can catch up on sleep.

The smell didn't go away, even though I was far away from any patients, the battlefield or the OR. It was all I could smell now, which made eating food unappealing, even if it was required to, you know, live.

The worst part was that these are soldiers. Unsolvable problems are bad enough on civilians, but on people who've thrown themselves on grenades and taken mortar fire and bullets, it just seems a million times worse. Having to write up the notes in Army jargon, watching them roll the mangled bodies away to pack into boxes draped with American flags…

Digg says the losses make the wins taste sweeter. But all I could taste is smoke and lead.


	2. Chapter 2

The first thing I noticed when I walked into his room was that he was certainly much more handsome than all the blood and grime let on.

Now that he was properly cleaned up, I could see his strong features, his brows and his shadowed, yet still well-defined jaw. I also noticed his intense blue eyes since they were — well, open.

"Command Sergeant Major Jonas, good to see you awake," Digg said. He put his stethoscope in his ears and pressed the bell against the soldier's chest. "I'm Dr. Diggle and this is Dr. Smoak. How are you feeling?"

"Like I got blown up by an improvised explosive device," Jonas deadpanned in a hoarse voice. "How are you?"

Digg chuckled and I smiled. We always enjoyed the soldiers that could look at their injuries with a sense of humor.

"I feel a great deal better than that, I'll admit," Digg confessed. "Can you take a couple of deep breaths for me?"

I watched his chest rise and fall underneath his hospital gown, and Digg nodded. Clear and equal breath sounds was good — we'd been worried that he would be in danger of a collapsed lung, considering the damage to his torso, but the scar tissue on his body showed he'd been through the wringer and made it to the other side.

"Have either of you talked to my CO yet?"

I snorted. "Oh, you mean Lieutenant Colonel Dickface? Yeah, he was a real treat."

A smile broke out over Jonas' face and I felt myself smiling back. "Wilson can be...testy."

"If by 'testy' you mean a testicle, then sure, because I'd sure like to kick him repeatedly as hard as I can," I muttered under my breath. Digg coughed in what I was sure was an attempt to cover up a laugh, so I continued on in our examination.

"Sir, are you experiencing any headaches? Dizziness? Lightheadedness?"

"Uh, well yeah, but I'm pretty sure it's just because of all the pain meds you've got me doped up on."

Fair enough. I moved on to the other questions while Digg finished his physical exam. When we were finished, we both made some notes in the chart and signed off.

"It looks like you're doing really well all things considered," I told him. "It'll be a little while longer before you're walking on that leg, but I wouldn't be surprised if we could get you doing some walking laps around the halls within a few weeks."

Digg nodded in agreement. "So just rest easy, sir, and let us know if you need anything."

With that, he tucked the chart under his arm and walked out. I was about to follow him when Jonas called out.

"Um, Dr. Smoak?"

I turned around and walked back to his bedside. "Yes, sir? What can I help you with?"

He smiled. "Well first, I'd really appreciate it if you could just call me Oliver."

I smiled back in spite of myself. "OK, Oliver. What can I do for you?"

His grin slowly melted away, and I watched in curiosity as he took in a deep breath, like he was bracing himself for what he had to say. "Does...does my family know about my condition?"

"Wilson should have been in contact with them. I'm sure he's told them you'll make a full recovery."

"The thing is...the thing is, he might not have," Oliver hedged. "I didn't...I wasn't exactly _truthful_ on my enlistment papers."

I raised an eyebrow. I hadn't known this soldier for very long, and I wasn't certain or anything, but lying on enlistment paperwork was probably a federal offense. Meaning he had built up a serious amount of trust in a really short amount of time to tell me all this.

"What exactly are you saying?"

He took in a deep breath. "I need you to contact my family for me," he said in a low voice. "My real name is Oliver Queen. Jonas is my middle name. I'm originally from Starling City."

This time both my eyebrows shot up my forehead. Holy shit.

"You're Oliver Queen? _The_ Oliver Queen? Heir to the Queen Consolidated throne? Son of Robert and Moira, brother of Thea and notorious Starling City playboy billionaire? Seriously?"

Well, that kind of explained the untruthiness of his enlistment papers.

He looked uncomfortable at my outburst, which I assumed meant I was right. "Look, could you just do me a favor and call my sister? She has to know that I'm fine. I Skype her every week, and if I don't she gets worried."

I squeezed my eyes shut and pinched the bridge of my nose underneath my glasses. I honestly couldn't believe what I was hearing.

"Oliver, there's a reason doctors aren't the ones who contact the family. Your CO is supposed to take care of it because I don't know anything about the mission you were on, and any information I give could violate OPSEC."

"All you have to tell her is that I got injured but that I'm OK."

I shot him the most exasperated look I had. "You clearly have never dealt with terrified family members before because that would never fly with any concerned sister, and that sure as hell isn't going to fly with Thea Queen."

It was his turn to raise his eyebrows, and I realized how that sounded.

"Not like I know her or anything," I quickly added. "I only know what I've read in the tabloids. And not like I read tabloids because I'm a doctor and tabloids are trash and doctors don't read trash, we read stuff like neurology journals. The only reason I know she's on tabloids is because they're at the cash register in the commissary and they only ever have like two registers open so I'm stuck in a long line reading the same headlines over and over again, and — look, whatever, what I'm saying is I really shouldn't be the one to do this."

But there was just something about him. There was something in his desperate blue eyes and his open face that made my hesitation melt away.

"Please, Dr. Smoak?" he begged softly. "I can't rest easy knowing that she's scared out of her mind because I couldn't contact her."

I let out a soft sigh, then pulled out my pen and notebook. "Give me her number, and I'll give her a call on my lunch break."

His begging expression dissolved into a smile as he recited her digits. "Thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it."

"Any topics of conversation I should refrain from?" I asked wryly. "Should I tell her you were accidentally knocked out by a stampede of camels instead of an IED?"

He shot me an amused grin, and I'm ashamed to say it made my heart zing.

"Camels don't stampede."

"Well how the hell would I know? I've never been out in the desert."

"Just tell her that there was a run-in with some insurgents and that I'm in the hospital, but the doctors think I'll make a full recovery."

Yeah, he had absolutely _zero_ experience dealing with terrified family members.

"Fine," I sighed as I stuffed my notebook and pen back into my coat pocket. "I'll be checking on you after lunch. If you need anything until then, tell the nurse to page me."

I turned my back and started walking out of his office when he called out to me, "You're the best, Doc! The absolute best!"

I could hear the grin in his voice and I felt my own lips turn upward in spite of myself.

* * *

I liked eating my lunches outside on the helipad. No one ever went out there unless there was incoming trauma, so it was quiet. It also was full of fresh air, so I could sometimes get away from the smells that plagued me long enough to force down a couple bites of whatever bland pasta salad the hospital cafeteria sold.

The helipad gave me time to think, think about Oliver Queen surreptitiously serving in the Armed Forces. He obviously didn't want anyone to know that he was in the Army, but why? And where did everyone back in Starling City think he was?

I shook my head as if to clear my curious thoughts. It wasn't my business to figure out. It was Oliver Queen's. I was just his doctor. And apparently his messenger, but nothing more.

I pushed away my barely eaten lunch and pulled my cellphone out of my coat pocket. I dialed the number he gave me and waited.

After the third ring, a raspy voice answered. "Hello?"

"Hi, is this Thea Queen?"

"Yeah…" the voice trailed off warily. "Who's this?"

I sucked in a deep breath. Here goes nothing. "I'm Dr. Felicity Smoak. I'm a trauma surgeon at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. I'm calling to inform you about your brother's condition."

"My brother?" Her voice suddenly took on a sharp tone. "How is he? Is he OK? Did something happen?"

"First, he told me to tell you not to panic," I interrupted her diatribe before she could work herself into an even bigger tizzy. "He wants you to know that he's fine. There was a, um, an insurgent attack where he was stationed and he got into some...well, some trouble, but he's fine now and we expect him to make a full recovery."

"What happened?" she demanded.

"Ms. Queen, I'm sorry, but I can't tell you any more than that. Most of his medical information is privileged, and details that haven't been cleared through the proper channels could violate operational security."

"Screw that!" she shouted. "My brother is injured in a hospital in Germany and I want to know what happened!"

Yep, I thought to myself. I could have seen this coming a mile away. "Ms. Queen, all you need to know is that your brother is fine. It's going to take him a while before he's back on his feet, but we expect him to make a full recovery."

"Let me talk to him."

"I'm afraid I can't let you."

"Yes you can! Let me talk to him right now!"

It looked like I was going to have to be more blunt with her than I cared for. "Ms. Queen, cell phones aren't allowed inside the hospital, but even if they were and I could let you talk to your brother, do you really think he'd tell you what happened? Especially since he told me he doesn't want you to panic?"

"If he didn't want me to panic then he'd be talking to me himself instead of making a goddamn nurse who couldn't tell her ass from a hole in the ground call me!"

I closed my eyes and brought a hand to my temple. "Ms. Queen, I know you're upset right now — "

"You're damn right I'm upset! My brother's in a hospital in fucking _Germany_ , and you won't let me talk to him! What kind of quack are you?"

I could feel the biggest headache in the world building. See, this was why military doctors were never supposed to talk to the families. This is also part of the reason I became a military doctor, so I would never have to talk to the families again.

The fact that I refused to categorize my exact type of quackery seemed to be unacceptable, because after a pause, she shouted, "You are going to regret this! I am Thea Queen, and I will make your life absolutely fucking miserable!"

I was so close to telling her that someone else already beat her to it, but she hung up before I got the chance.

I let out a deep sigh. I didn't exactly blame her for lashing out at me, but it sure as hell wasn't pleasant being on the other end of her anger.

I wrapped up the remnants of my uneaten lunch and headed back into the hospital. The first stop I made was to the nurse's station.

"Hey, Speedy," I greeted the nurse on duty. "Could you get me CSM Jonas' chart, please?"

He reached over and grabbed the chart in question. "Hey, speaking of that guy, is it just me or does that dude look kinda familiar?"

"Uh, I don't know what you mean," I hedged.

"There's just...something about that face. Like I've seen it before or whatever."

I shrugged. "I don't know. All soldiers start to look the same to me after a while. They all have the same haircuts and the same face and stuff." And before he could say something else that would force me to stick my foot in my mouth, I walked away.

When I got to Oliver's room, he was sitting up in his bed, staring out the window with a brooding expression. I felt struck by his dramatically lit profile. It lightened the intensity of his eyes, the strength of his shadowed jaw.

What was he thinking about, I wondered. Was he thinking about his worried sister? Was he thinking about his parents? His battle brothers? His dickish CO? Or was he thinking about a woman he might have left behind in Starling City?

I started imagining the kind of women Oliver Queen preferred. If the tabloids I never read were any indication, he usually went for the tall vixens. Women with incredible bodies, long brown hair and sharp eyes. Someone who would look equally as impressive as he did, so they could both go to the same fancy functions and light up the whole room with their collective beauty.

What would it be like to live in that kind of world? One that wasn't haunted by echoing screams and rotting limbs? How jealous I suddenly felt, that he could belong in that world while I was stuck here, in a sterilized version of hell.

"Dr. Smoak?"

I was shaken from my reveries when Oliver called my name. Taking a deep breath and pulling myself back into the present, I stepped toward his bed. "Good afternoon, Oliver. How are you feeling since this morning?"

"Clearer. I can feel the pain a little bit now."

"Is that uncomfortable for you? Would you like to raise the meds a little bit?"

"No, that won't be necessary. I'm fine." He grinned at me. "What's life without a little pain, right?"

I gave him a weak smile in return. "OK, anything else? Headaches, dizziness? Abdominal pain?"

"No, nothing. Did you talk to my sister?"

I scribbled a couple of notes in the chart. "Yes, I did."

He made a little face, like he was bracing himself for something. "And...how did she take it?"

I shot him a look. "Oh, you mean how did she take the news that her big brother was in the hospital because of some unknown Army incident? She took it swell. She cried with happiness and she asked me for my address because she wanted to send me flowers. That's how grateful she was when I told her you were in an insurgent attack."

He sighed. "I'm guessing by your tone that she didn't really do any of that."

"No, she didn't, and how you could possibly think she'd handle the news that her big brother was injured enough to land in the hospital in anything other than hysteria is straight up idiocy." I put my stethoscope to my ears and listened to his breath sounds.

"Is there any way I could talk with her? Like could I borrow your cell phone or something?"

I shook my head and made him lean forward. "Sorry. No cell phones in the hospital."

"I have to talk to her. Could you bring me a computer or something? I could Skype with her? Or just even send her an email, please?"

I pulled my stethoscope out of my ears and gave him an exasperated look. "I can't do any of that. All of the computers here are DOD issued, and all unofficial business gets tagged, and there's really no getting around the system. I would know. I'm something of a computer aficionado."

He slumped back into his pillows and turned his head back toward the window. His expression this time was less brooding and more...sad. Tragic, almost. It made my heart ache to think what he might have been feeling right at that moment.

I sucked in a deep breath and let it back out through my mouth. "OK, I'll tell you what." I pulled a chair up next to his bed and I grabbed the pad of paper off his bedside table. "I know you can't use your hands very well right now, so why don't you dictate a letter and I'll send it out this afternoon. It should get to her by the end of this week, at the latest."

His face lit up and for a second I was struck dumb by just how beautiful his smile was. It was enough to make my heart speed up and leap into my throat. "Dr. Smoak, you are remarkable."

I swallowed hard to push my heart down. "Thank you for remarking on it."


	3. Chapter 3

There's a reason I don't really sleep well anymore, aside from the whole smell thing. If I ever do manage to get to sleep, I get nightmares.

Well, more like night _mare_. Singular.

It always starts out the same. I'm standing in the hangar, watching the Marines carrying his flag-draped casket off the plane. Myron follows them, still in his Army regs. He takes his hat off his head and walks up to me, his eyes full of sorrow. Then he reaches into his left pocket and pulls it out: a tiny velvet box.

Here is where it varies. This time I open the box, and inside is the tiniest bomb with a blinking red light, and before I know it, the bomb explodes and takes me with it.

I wrenched my eyes open, gasping for breath. After a moment to gather my bearings, I realized I was in the on-call room, in the bottom bunk. But this information didn't make my pounding heart slow down.

"Felicity?" a groggy voice called to me from above. "Are you OK?"

I swallowed, trying to rid the blood pumping in my ears. "Yeah," I answered him. "I'm OK."

"Was it the nightmare?"

I brought my hands over my eyes. I could still see the box, still see the tiny blinking light on the bomb before it exploded. And of course, I could smell burning skin.

When I didn't say anything, Digg climbed out of the top bunk and landed on the floor with a thud. I still had my eyes closed, but I knew he was crouched beside me, trying to make out my figure in the dark. "You know what I'm going to tell you."

I clenched my jaw. I _did_ know what he was going to tell me, because he'd been saying the same thing for a year now. "I'm fine, Digg."

"One phone call. You'd take a couple of weeks from surgery, but you'd be back immediately afterward. And I really think it could help."

In a swift movement, I sat up and got out of the bed. Without a word to him, I grabbed my shoes and my coat and felt around blindly for the door.

"Where are you going?"

"Out." When my hand finally found the knob, I yanked the door open stomped away.

* * *

Hospitals are creepy places to begin with, but hospitals at night are even creepier. Not that Landstuhl is ever empty, because there's always the on-call people and the night nurses, but the hallways are darker, and the patients are sleeping and everything's quiet.

The quiet was what I needed at the moment, though. I wandered around the halls aimlessly and without thinking. Or trying very hard not to think about anything. Thinking was what got me in trouble. Thinking was what made it hard to sleep. Thinking was —

"Doc?"

I let out a soft squeak when I heard the voice call out to me. My mind snapped back to my present surroundings and I realized I had just passed Oliver Queen's hospital room, and he was still awake. He must have seen me walk past, which was why he called out to me.

"Oliver?" I backtracked until I stood in his doorway. He was sitting up in his bed with the TV on and the remote in his hand. "What are you doing awake?"

"Couldn't sleep. I'm still on J-bad time."

I glanced down at my watch. It was 2 a.m. local time, meaning it was 6 a.m. where he was stationed. I felt for the guy, having to get up at ass o'clock every morning. I mean, I had to as well, but all the same.

"Try to get some sleep," I told him. "You'll heal faster if you do."

He cocked his head to the side in curiosity. "Why aren't _you_ asleep? As a matter of fact, why are you still here?"

"I work here," I answered, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.

"Yeah, but don't you have a home? A bed with non-hospital sheets that are infinitely more comfortable?"

"I'm on call tonight. It's a lot easier for me to just sleep here when I'm on call than to have to travel from my apartment."

"So then why aren't you asleep?"

I shrugged. "Same reason you aren't, I guess. Minus the whole jetlag thing."

Something in his eyes said he didn't quite believe me, but he didn't push the matter, for which I was grateful. I was about to walk away and return to my thoughtless wandering when he asked, "How well do you know German?"

I quirked an eyebrow upward. "Ich weiß, dass es gut."

He grimaced. "OK, well you don't have to show off or anything."

I couldn't help but laugh at that. "Why? Are you having difficulty translating?"

"Isn't this supposed to be a U.S. Army hospital?" he complained, gesturing at the television with his remote. "All the channels are in German!"

I walked toward his bed and took the remote from him. "That would make sense since we are in Germany." I fiddled around with the remote and the TV for a few seconds and when I was finished, everyone was back to speaking in English.

"Oh," he said in surprise. "I didn't know you could do that."

I handed him back the remote and watched the action on the screen. Immediately, I recognized Sara Crewe and her handsome father, preparing to move her to New York. "I love this movie," I sighed wistfully.

"I've never seen it. What is it?"

That was enough to rip my eyes away from the screen to stare at him in horror. "What?!" I demanded. "Are you insane? You've never seen _A Little Princess_? What in the world is wrong with you?!"

"What? I'm a dude and this is clearly a little girl's movie," he protested, yet an amused look sparkled in his eyes when he looked at my utter indignation.

I narrowed my eyes at him. Apparently his heritage wasn't as privileged as I thought — to be deprived of such classic cinema was a crime against culture.

Resolutely, I yanked the remote from his loose grip and before he could protest, I stuffed it in my coat pocket and plopped down on the chair next to his bed. "We'll see if you still think it's a little girl's movie after you've watched the whole thing."

"Hey, you can't just make me watch this movie," he sputtered. "I have rights."

"Not here you don't." I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at the screen. Sara was taking a tour of the boarding school for the first time, clutching her doll Emily as she wandered around with her father.

"I could bring you up on war crimes."

"I could bring your parents up on child abuse for never having shown you this movie. Now shut up and watch."

From the corner of my eye, I saw him stick his tongue out at me before reluctantly turning his attention back to the TV. When I was sure he wasn't looking, the corners of my lips quirked upward.

During the first half of the movie, Oliver kept asking questions. So many freaking questions. _What war is this set in? Why did she go to boarding school in New York? Why didn't she just go back to England? How is her dad able to afford all of this shit?_

But his questions died down after Sara's birthday party, and she received the news that her father had died. We were both completely silent as we watched Sara's descent into poverty and her utter despair over the loss of her father.

At the end, when the amnesiac next door finally recognized his daughter, tears started leaking from the corners of my eyes. A soldier came back from the dead. He returned to his beloved. He kept his promise to his princess.

God, how I wished it was so.

When the movie was over, I turned my head away from Oliver so I could wipe my tears away without him seeing.

"So what did you think?" I asked brightly, trying to mask my overflowing feelings.

"It was all right," he shrugged. But upon closer examination, I saw that his gray-blue eyes were a lot shinier than normal. And he was blinking rapidly.

"Uh-huh," I said skeptically. But I smiled at his reluctance to admit that what he initially called a "little girl's movie" was actually good. For some reason I found it endearing.

"I knew a guy like that."

"Like what?"

"Like that dad in the movie," he answered. The credits were rolling on the screen, but his eyes were still on it. Unfocused. Unmoving. "He was in my company last year, while we were at Fort Campbell. He had a daughter he loved more than anyone else in the world. He kept a photo of her in his hat, which got really grody from all the sweat. But he never replaced it."

That made me smile. "So where is he now?"

"Six feet in the ground, next to his daughter." Oliver's face was blank, but his eyes clouded over with an emotion I couldn't quite identify. "Shot her, then shot himself a month before we were set to deploy."

My heart and my hands clenched at his words, and the smile fell off my face. It wasn't the first story like that I'd heard, and I knew it wouldn't be the last either.

That's the thing about "the mission." Everyone who's a part of it has a million stories like that one, with no end in sight. Not until "the mission" is completed, even though it's been going on since the beginning of time. I doubted I could even remember what "the mission" was at that point.

"Well," I said, pulling myself out of the chair. "I should get some sleep before rounds. And you should, too."

"Yeah." But he didn't move a muscle. His eyes were still on the screen, his mind back at Fort Campbell. "Good night, Doc."

"Good night, Oliver."


	4. Chapter 4

"So, got any special plans for your weekend off?"

I smiled and shook my wet hands out into the scrub sink. "I am going to do laundry, clean my apartment, call my mom and spend the rest of the time watching the backlog of recorded shows I have on my DVR."

Digg gave me the most pitying look I'd ever been subjected to. "You've got to be kidding me."

"Not at all. It's going to be great. I've been looking forward to it all month."

"Felicity, you are a young, independent woman. You can't be spending precious time off you have behaving like a 60-year-old spinster."

" _Au contraire_ , Digg. The fact that I am a young, independent woman means I get to behave however the hell I want. Within the bounds of reason, though. I'm not going to like, go and knock over a liquor store or something."

He sighed. "Would you at least have dinner with Lyla and me? Tomorrow night, after I get off my shift. You need non-hospital, adult stimulation."

"You're technically part of the hospital," I pointed out.

"Not after 8 p.m. tomorrow I'm not. Come on, Smoak. Live a little."

God, I hated that phrase. The fact that I was walking and talking and blinking and breathing meant that I was living. I was alive, however small a gesture that seemed to everyone else.

"I'll get Lyla to make her mashed potatoes."

Oh, now that just wasn't _fair_.

I grumbled and threw my head back in defeat. " _Fine_. I'll be there, but to be perfectly clear: I'm only there for the mashed potatoes. I'm going to this thing purely under duress."

Digg chuckled. "I will take note. See you tomorrow night."

"Bye."

I had just finished my last surgery of the day. It was the only thing keeping me from my weekend, a whole forty-eight hours off. A whole two, glorious days without blood and as far away from the hospital as possible.

After I changed, I felt my phone vibrate in the back pocket of my jeans. The number wasn't one I recognized, but it was a U.S. area code. Frowning, I answered, "Dr. Smoak."

There was a loud sniff. Then, "Hi. Um...this is Thea Queen."

I stopped in my tracks. Well, this was a surprise.

"Look, I'm...I'm really sorry about snapping at you. Before, when you called me to tell me about my brother. I was just...shocked, is all."

I sat down on the bench in front of my locker. "No, I get it."

"I got his letter this afternoon. But since I could actually read it, I knew it wasn't Ollie's handwriting. So was it you?"

I smiled. It was cute that she knew her brother so well. "He came up with the words. I just wrote them down."

"Thank you, though. Thank you for doing that for him. For me. Especially after I was such a colossal asshole to you."

"It was nothing."

There was another loud sniff, then silence. Finally, after a prolonged moment, she asked quietly, "How long do you think? Before he's fully recovered?"

"I couldn't say for sure. But he'll probably have to stay here for the remainder of his deployment."

I heard a whoosh on the other end, almost as if she was letting out a deep breath. "Is it bad that hearing that makes me feel relieved? I mean, I hate that he's injured and in a hospital, but it also means that he won't be in danger for a while."

My voice got soft. "No, I get it. It makes sense."

"Is there _any_ way I could talk to him? Any way at all? Could you please just bend the rules, just this once?"

"I'm afraid I can't. We can't allow cell phones because the cellular waves interfere with the technology."

She sighed again. "I'm going to kick his ass the next time I see him."

I grinned at that. "Just not too hard, OK? We went to pretty great lengths to patch him up and I'd hate to see my work undone."

She gave a weak chuckle. "Right."

"Thea, do you need me to talk to your parents as well?"

"Uh…" There was a lot of hesitation in her voice. "Well, the thing is, our parents don't really know that he's in the Army…"

My eyes widened. "What?"

"Yeah. No one really knows that he's in the Army. Tommy Merlyn and I are the only ones. And now you, apparently."

What the ever-loving fuck. "Then where the hell does everyone think he is?" I demanded.

"They think he's backpacking through Asia. Doing some...mountain climbing and soul-searching and stuff."

Jesus Christ. This guy had so many secrets he should have been working for the CIA instead of being a grunt in the Army. "OK, well in that case I think I'll just let you handle it."

"Yeah, probably for the best. Look, if anything changes could...could you keep me updated?"

"Of course."

"And could you also smack him in the head for me?"

I smiled again. "I don't know about that, but maybe I'll have a hard time searching for a good vein the next time I need to draw his blood."

She laughed. "I'll take it. Thank you, Dr. Smoak. And could you...could you tell him I love him?"

"Of course. He'll be glad to hear it. Take care, Ms. Queen."

When I hung up I got back up, ready to go home. But then I realized that even though I knew Thea was OK, the person who needed to know the most didn't. I turned on my heel, resolving to tell Oliver about my phone call with his sister, then heading home to numb myself with trashy television.

He was flipping through the television channels aimlessly when I got there, the most bored expression. "Hey."

He turned his head when he heard my voice and his face lit up. "Hey, Doc. Where are your scrubs?"

"I have a life you know," I teased. "I do things outside of this hospital."

"No, I don't believe that. You're like an elementary school teacher, you never leave this hospital. You just power down and hide in a supply closet until the work day starts again."

"Ha ha. Just for that, I don't think I'm going to tell you what Thea said when she called me."

That sure caught his attention. He sat up straighter in his bed, but winced at the movement. "Wait," he grunted. "Thea called you?"

"Yeah." I smirked, sauntering closer to his bed. "She said she got your letter. She told me she was sorry about yelling at me before and that she loves you and that she's going to kick your ass the next time she sees you."

He beamed widely. "Of course she did."

"You seem awfully happy considering she threatened you."

"It just means she loves me. She'd never want me to come home dead, because then it would deny her the pleasure of killing me herself."

I laughed and shook my head. "Well clearly I don't understand your family dynamic. Anyway, I just stopped in to tell you your sister called. And now I am off to enjoy a weekend away from this dump."

"Any plans? A hot date, perhaps?" He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

I rolled my eyes. Yeah, right. "Sure, if a basket of laundry counts. Take it easy, Oliver."

"Have a good weekend, Doc."

* * *

Digg and Lyla lived on the fourth floor of a brand-new apartment building, constructed specifically to house those who worked for LRMC and their families. It was a gorgeous building with crazy amenities, and Digg's seniority won him a coveted spot. It also helped that Lyla was pregnant when they were moving.

I got to their door and knocked. A few seconds later, it opened, with Digg's enormous body blocking the frame.

"Hey," I greeted brightly. "I brought a bottle of Lyla's favorite wine. Since she's finally finished breastfeeding, I figured she deserved a celebration of sorts."

"I just want to say for the record, it wasn't my idea." His voice was low and conciliatory, and his face was apologetic.

I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. "Uh...so the wine was a bad idea?"

He sighed. "No, the wine is fine, it's just...don't kill me or anything. And don't kill Lyla. Her heart was in the right place, OK?"

Before I could ask him what the hell he was talking about, he pulled away from the doorway and let me in. I stepped across the threshold of their apartment, inhaling the gorgeous scent of roasted garlic.

"Mmm, Lyla, are those mashed potatoes I smell?" I tugged my sweater off and threw it over the hook on the coat rack by the door. Then I sauntered toward the kitchen with my bottle of wine. When I got there, Digg's wife was standing at the stove with an incredibly tall, dark-haired man beside her.

"Felicity!" she exclaimed. Dropping her spoon, she rushed forward to hug me. "Thank you so much for coming. I want you to meet my friend Ray. Ray, this is Felicity Smoak. She's a doctor at Landstuhl with Johnny."

I was confused by Ray's presence, but I tried not to let that show. "It's nice to meet you," I said, reaching my hand forward to shake his.

He returned the favor with a grin that was too wide and stayed too long on his face. "It's nice to meet you, too. Lyla's told me _so_ much about you."

My smile froze on my face. "Oh she did?"

"For the past few months at the office she just hasn't been able to shut up about you, and I thought to myself, this Felicity must be extraordinary. I just have to meet her."

"Oh, well I'm not all that extraordinary," I hedged. Setting the bottle of wine down, I slowly backed away from them. "Um, if you could just excuse me for a minute, I forgot that I had to ask Digg a question about, um...something with the, uh, the patient. The patient who needed a transplant for the thing, just — excuse me."

While I had them both sufficiently confused, I sped away from the kitchen to find my traitorous friend. Unsurprisingly, he was hiding in Sara's nursery, holding her like a shield from my ire in his gigantic arms.

"You invited me to dinner so you could set me up on a blind date?" I hissed.

"No," he insisted. "No, I did not. I invited you to dinner because you needed to spend time with other adults outside the hospital. It was Lyla's idea to invite Ray."

"Oh, and that's another thing," continuing on like I hadn't heard him. "You set me up with a guy named _Ray_?"

"Now come on, what's wrong with the name Ray?"

"Everyone knows Rays are serial killers! They're the kind of serial killers who stalk their prey on Craigslist personals, then date their targets for a couple of months all while plotting an elaborate kill that ends with a body hanging upside down from the ceiling by their ankles, completely drained of blood!"

"What the hell kind of books are you reading where that's a thing?"

"It doesn't matter! The point is you _lured_ me to your apartment with the promise of amazing potatoes and a stress-free evening only to trick me with some dude with a serial killer name and a serial killer smile!"

"Felicity, I know you're mad, but I swear to God I didn't have anything to do with it. Lyla was just trying to look out for you. She thinks you're too lonely and that you need to get out more."

I clenched my jaw. "I'm leaving," I announced. I turned on my heel and was about to stomp out of the nursery, but Digg was too quick for me.

"Wait, come on now," he said, grabbing a hold of my shoulder. "It's just dinner, not like a lifetime commitment. We're not marrying you off to this guy, we're just asking you to spend _one_ evening with us, and partly with him."

"Digg — "

"When was the last time you went out on a date?" he challenged.

My fury rolled off of me in red hot waves, over and over again as I balled my fists at my side. I wasn't getting into this. Not with Digg, not with anyone.

"It's been _five years_ since it happened, Felicity."

No it wasn't. It might have seemed that way to everyone else, but it happened every time I fell asleep. Everyone said the wounds should have healed by now, but how in the world could they heal when my subconscious ripped them open every night?

"It's like you've been alone, on a deserted island for the past five years. Well here's a news flash for you, Felicity Smoak: people care about you. _I_ care about you. And it's time you came back to the mainland. It's time you start living your life."

Tears started forming and rolling down my cheeks without my permission. "I _am_ living," I insisted bitterly. "My heart is beating, my blood is pumping and my brain is functioning. I'm _alive_ , and that in and of itself is a fucking miracle. I don't know what the hell else you want from me."

"It's not what I want _from_ you, it's what I want _for_ you. And what I want is for you to be happy. I'm not saying Ray's the guy to do that, but opening yourself up for the first time in five years could be a step."

I still had my back to him, but I could hear him walking up to face me. He passed his tiny child to me with his gigantic arms. Automatically I reached toward her, cradling her against me as if it was second nature.

"Why don't you hold Sara and think about it. I'm going to help Lyla with dinner."

I narrowed my eyes at his retreating back when I realized what he'd done. He used his adorable kid to anchor me in place. He knew I couldn't just leave, especially with his daughter staring up at me with the cutest eyes in the whole fucking world.

Sneaky, smug bastard.

"Your dad doesn't play fair," I murmured to Sara. Then I pressed a soft kiss to her fuzzy head, but she didn't pay any attention as she made clumsy grabs for the pendant hanging around my neck.

Ten minutes later, Digg came to inform me that dinner was ready. By then Sara had already fallen asleep in my arms, so I set her gently in her crib and grudgingly followed him out to the dining room. Ray and Lyla were already seated, leaving me to sit on the opposite side of my ignorant blind date.

After we'd all sat down and settled, Lyla turned to me. "I made extra mashed potatoes for you, Felicity, so you'd be able to take the leftovers home with you."

My smile was strained, but I tried my hardest. "Thanks, Lyla. You make the best mashed potatoes in the world."

"Now I don't know about that," Ray protested with a laugh. "I bet my grandma could give you a run for your money."

My hands clenched over my utensils, but I could feel Digg's pointed glare in my direction. My plastered grin wavered as I turned my attention across the table. "Sorry, dude, but you've never tried Lyla's potatoes before. She either puts crack in them or some other illegal substance because they're addictive."

Lyla laughed graciously. "Oh, my potatoes are good, but I'm sure there are plenty of other amazing recipes out there in the world. Now go on, everyone. Eat."

We started digging, so conversation ceased for a minute. After a few minutes, I decided to bite the bullet and just dive right in.

"So, uh, Ray. How do you and Lyla know each other?"

"We work at ARGUS together," he answered. "I'm in op tech. Making things, mostly. She's the one who's actually going out and saving the world, I'm just making the stuff she uses."

"His designs are brilliant," Lyla beamed. "His technology has gotten us through more than a few scrapes, let me tell you."

"Oh?" I said blandly. "Do tell."

And from there he launched into a full 10-minute speech of almost everything he'd ever made at ARGUS ever. Being a bit of a tech geek myself, I found some of it interesting, but it was hard to participate in a one-sided conversation and I found my attention drifting away from the conversation.

Instead, I started wondering what I could have been doing right now if I wasn't stuck in Digg's apartment. I could have been folding the piles of forgotten laundry in my apartment. I could have been catching up on mindless American television. I could have been cleaning out my keyboard.

Or I could have been at the hospital. As much as I needed two days away, I could have caught up on paperwork and charts. I could have organized my locker. Or I could have hung out with Oliver, forcing him to watch another movie he mistakenly believed was of the little girl's genre.

"So what about you?" Ray asked, which jolted me back to the present. "Lyla mentioned you were a doctor at LRMC."

"Uh, yeah. Digg and I are both trauma surgeons."

"Really? I find that fascinating."

"It can be," Digg nodded.

"Does that mean you get to operate on mangled soldiers?"

His innocent question had the effect of basically throwing me head first into a pool of ice water. I felt cold everywhere, and the generic smile I had fell immediately. "Yeah. We do."

Ray was either an idiot or just completely oblivious to the mood change. "What's that like? Is it exciting? I imagine you guys must have some really great stories."

Digg and I didn't like talking about it all that much. It wasn't that we didn't do great work — we both had incredibly low fatality rates, which made us some of the most sought out trauma surgeons in the world. But despite the many success stories we had, the ones that didn't make it still haunted us, and it was hard to explain to people who didn't understand.

"Let's not talk about surgery at dinner," Digg said gently. "Let's talk about something else. Lyla, did you see the other day when Sara started to pull herself up in her crib?"

I shot Digg a grateful smile. He might have done it for himself as much as he did it for me, but it was still a huge relief not to have to talk about it.

Dinner continued without much more incident. We didn't bring up work again and Ray and I even bonded a little over a shared interest in computer technology. By the end of coffee, I grudgingly had to admit to myself that it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I mean, there was no way I would probably go out on an actual date with this guy, but it was nice to spend some time outside of the hospital not talking about the hospital.

As I stood to leave and donned my sweater, Lyla packed up the leftover mashed potatoes for me. "Oh, and Ray, could you walk her home?" she said as she handed me the tupperware container. "She's on your way."

"That won't be necessary," I quickly interrupted. "I can handle myself."

"I know you can, but I'd feel a whole lot better if you didn't have to."

"It's OK," Ray said with a smile. "I'd be happy to."

Ray had his back turned to Lyla, who winked at me. I just glared at her in return.

We gave our last goodbyes to Digg and Lyla, then headed out of their apartment. Once we were out on the streets, I wrapped my arms around myself, hoping it wouldn't give the guy any ideas. Like to reach over and grab my hand or something.

"So where do you live?" he asked.

"Just a few blocks south."

"Well what do you know. It is on my way."

We walked in silence for a little while. Then Ray said, "It was really nice of Lyla to invite me to your dinner. It's been a while since I was on such an obvious set up."

I couldn't help but laugh at that. "Yeah, me too."

"So what's the story with that? Surely there's a story."

I looked down, watching my feet step one in front of the other. He was right, but it wasn't a story I was particularly inclined to tell, especially to a complete stranger.

"She just thinks I'm too lonely. That I spend too much time working." I looked up at him. "What about you? I'm assuming she dragged you out tonight too."

He shrugged. "I used to be engaged. Her name was Anna, but she died right in front of me, in a freak accident back in Starling City."

Oh.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly. It was a shitty, inadequate phrase that didn't encompass even a fraction of all the empathy I felt for him in the moment, but it was all I had.

"Yeah, well." He sighed. "It was five years ago, so I figure it's finally time I move on. Lyla seems to think so anyway."

I smiled in spite of myself. "In my experience, she's usually right."

We were rounding on the corner of my apartment when he asked, "So, do I still seem like a serial killer to you, or is it going to take a second date in a public place to convince you?"

Blood rushed to my face and my jaw fell in horror. Oh God.

"Oh, Ray...I'm uh, I'm really — I didn't mean that, I was just — "

He laughed. "No, I get it. Anna used to say the same thing too. She said sometimes I'd get too intense and it looked like I wanted to kill her or something. But I promise, I've never killed anyone before."

I smiled weakly at him. Too bad I couldn't say the same. "I'm still really sorry. It was before I talked to you."

"Well I hope I've changed your mind."

We stopped at the door to my apartment and I smiled at him. "I don't _think_ you're a serial killer anymore, but I'm holding off judgment."

"I'll take what I can get." He was so tall that he had to look down at me, but it didn't feel that condescending. "So would it be possible that I could ask you out? Maybe to coffee or something?"

The wall around my heart sort of clenched immediately, but I tried to hold off my automatic defenses. Maybe Digg was right. Maybe it had been long enough and it was time for me to start.

But even the idea of starting again with this Ray guy made me want to run up to my apartment and hide under a blanket and a bottle of Jose Cuervo and never emerge.

"I really don't know, Ray. I just…"

My words trailed off because I didn't have any left. I didn't know if I had anything left at all.

He nodded. "Felicity, I understand. How about we just exchange phone numbers and go slowly by starting as friends? Because regardless, I'd really like to be your friend."

The pounding in my veins slowed and I grinned at him in relief. "I think I can do that," I told him.


	5. Chapter 5

The Nightmare was back.

I'm standing in the hangar, watching as Myron walks off the plane, following the casket. He veers straight to me with the saddest expression in his eyes, and then he pulls the box from his pocket.

"He bought this while he was over there," he murmurs.

I take the box from him with shaking fingers. When I open it, I notice a glowing pearl set into a gossamer-fine silver band. It's simple, elegant. Perfect.

My eyes well up and I lose what little composure I could hold onto. My knees give out from underneath me, and Myron's there to catch me before I sink into the ground.

"COOPER!" I wail, still clutching the box. "NO! NO!"

I bolted upright in my bed, my heart pounding and my pulse racing. My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I realized with a small wave of relief that at least I was in my apartment and not at the hospital.

But the relief wasn't enough to dispel the ache in my soul. The Nightmare had the ability to cut me to the core, strip me bare and leave me to deal with my unending grief.

Honestly, I should have seen this coming. It had been three days since my surprise blind date at Digg's apartment. Three days since I reluctantly gave Ray my number. Three days of text messages that made me smile.

Of course the peace couldn't last. Of course it would come back to haunt me. I was stupid for ever thinking I could escape it.

It made me sort of hate Ray in that moment. It was horrible that his fiancee had died in a freak accident right in front of him, but the fact of the matter was that he was moving on. The fact that he _could_ move on, and do so with ease made me hate him.

I couldn't. I couldn't move on. Not when the ghosts of my past haunted my dreams, bringing me back to the worst day of my life over and over and over.

Tears burned in the back of my eyes, and I blindly reached for the glass of water by my bed. Without thinking, I threw it as hard as I could against my bedroom door, listening to the crash of glass breaking.

Digg said it was time I got off the deserted island and came back to the mainland. He didn't realize that this wasn't just an island. This was some version of a perpetual hell that I could never leave.

I was stuck forever.

* * *

I was sitting at the nurse's station, leaning back in my seat. My feet were propped up on the desk and my head was thrown back over the chair, and I had my eyes closed. The problem with my chronic insomnia was the fact that I already worked awful hours at a job that required an insane amount of concentration. I had to find opportunities to relax whenever I could.

"Get your feet off the desk," a disapproving voice demanded.

"Shove it, Speedy," I monotoned, my eyes still closed.

He didn't take to my suggestion, and a second later my feet fell off the desk, forcing me upright in my chair. I wrenched my eyes open to glare at the nurse smirking at me.

"In case you've forgotten, this is the _nurses'_ station. You doctors might have free reign everywhere else in this hospital, but not here."

"Cut me some slack." I rolled my neck around and stretched out my back. "I didn't get any sleep last night and I just got out of a six-hour surgery."

"Yeah, I noticed that the bags under your eyes were a little grayer than usual."

"You're a real charmer, you know that? How you're still single is an eternal mystery."

He just smirked. "So what's the matter? What's with your fucked sleeping pattern?"

I shrugged, hoping the nonchalant air masked the turmoil underneath. "I don't know. I've never had a normal sleeping pattern, really."

"You're a shitty liar, Blondie."

"You're unprofessional, Roy."

My retort didn't move him. He remained where he was, leaning against the desk, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyebrows raised, waiting for me to tell him what was really wrong.

I sighed. "Just...it's just some nightmares and stuff. Explosions. Crying. People I couldn't save." Which was both true and untrue at the same time. There was so much more to it. So many layers that I didn't want to delve into.

Maybe he sensed it, maybe he didn't. If he did, he didn't push it. He just nodded and said, "Yeah, I get those too."

I cocked my head to the side and examined him. His eyes were looking right back at me, clear and honest. He wasn't lying, he wasn't making it up. He was telling the truth.

"What, you think you doctors are the only ones affected by deaths?" he challenged. "You barely spend any time with these guys. We're the ones emptying their bed pans, giving them their meds, making sure they don't slit their wrists in the bathroom. You're the ones who save their lives but we're the ones who try to keep them alive."

I made a face at the implication that I didn't care, but didn't say anything otherwise. After a beat, I asked, "So how do you deal with it? The nightmares, I mean."

He shrugged. "I don't know. Just do my best to save the next guy that comes along. That's all I can do."

That didn't help. He was right, because it _was_ all we could do, but it didn't make the nightmares go away. It didn't do anything but make me feel guiltier for the ones I couldn't save.

I must have been too lost in my thoughts to pay attention to Roy because I almost jumped out of my seat when he tapped me gently on the top of my head with a clipboard he was holding. He chuckled at how startled I acted. "Look, Blondie, whatever's bothering you, I guarantee you all of us in this hospital have been through it too. Just know that."

I really, truly doubted that. But I didn't say it — I just smiled blandly at him as I got up and pecked him on his cheek.

"Thanks, Roy."

"God, gross," he complained, immediately wiping his cheek with his hand. "That's sexual harassment."

"Sure is," I winked. Then I went off to finish some actual work, like organize my schedule and check on my patients.

The last one I rounded on was Oliver. He slept soundly, and I took a moment in his doorway to watch his sleeping figure.

For all the cliches of people looking peaceful in their sleep, I have to say that most of the time this isn't true for injured soldiers. They usually wake up in the middle of the night thrashing and wrapping their hands around the nearest neck. Sad but true.

But Oliver was just bucking trends all over the place. Instead of a fitful sleep, he lay completely still, breathing slowly and evenly. There were no traces of distress in his brows. He really was at peace.

I cocked my head to the side and watched in silence. What was he dreaming about? Was he dreaming at all? What did it feel like to be able to sleep peacefully? It had been so long since I'd gone a whole night without waking up in a cold sweat that I'd all but forgotten a time before it happened.

Treading quietly, I recorded the readings off his monitors, checking to make sure he was healing at the rate we thought he was. Then I put my stethoscope to my ears, but the minute I pressed the bell against his chest, his eyes fluttered open.

"Doc?" he rasped.

"Hey," I murmured with a soft smile. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"It's fine," he answered, his own lips turning up into a sleepy grin. I don't know why, but it made my heart stop in my chest for a brief second.

"I'll be really quick, and then you can go back to sleep."

I went back to my examination, paying attention to his heartbeat and breath sounds. After confirming their strength and recording it in his chart, I checked his brain function by watching his eyes focus on my finger. When I was finished, I patted him lightly on the shoulder. "Everything looks good." I shot him one last smile and started to walk away, but he caught my hand.

"Hold on, Doc," he protested. "You woke me up. I can't just go back to sleep."

I raised any eyebrow at him. "And what do you expect me to do about that?"

"Keep me company," he answered. "I know for a fact I'm always the last patient you check up on."

"Oh? And how is that?" I challenged.

"Because I'm the least important to you." He let out a long suffering sigh and I had to struggle to tamp down on my laughter. "You see me last because you don't care about me. The least you could do to make up for that is to sit with me for a little while and talk with me."

"Well you're right, you are the least important to me," I teased him. "But I guess I can spare _some_ time to hang with you." And with that, I plopped down on the chair next to his bed.

His smile was bright enough to outshine the sun, and I felt myself returning the expression.

"So how have you been?" he asked conversationally. "How did that fancy weekend of yours turn out?"

"Ahh." I sighed and slumped forward in my chair to press my face into my hands. "Well, Digg turned what was supposed to be a simple dinner party into a surprise blind date, so there's that."

"Oh really?" His eyes sparkled with a sort of mischievous mirth that made me all the more wary. "He was ugly, wasn't he?"

"What? What makes you think that?"

"You've got that look my sister gets on her face whenever she goes out only to find that there are no good looking guys in the club."

That made me chuckle. "No, Ray isn't ugly. He was also perfectly nice and polite. I mean, he babbled a little bit, but it was like an amount I could handle."

"He babbles, huh?" The corners of his mouth turned upward in a mischievous expression. "You sure the two of you aren't related or something?"

I shot him the most withering glare I could manage. "You watch yourself, Queen. I have access to very sharp surgical tools."

His grin widened. "I'm just saying. I haven't known you long or anything, but I already know you have a tendency to babble. It's kinda cute, actually."

I was lucky I had turned my attention to adjusting something on his monitors when he said that, because if I had been looking at him he would have seen how red my face was. Or maybe he could have seen it. He probably could have felt it because my cheeks were radiating heat ten times the amount of the sun.

"Well you're the first person who's ever thought that," I said, keeping my eyes far away from his. "As a child my mother imposed mandatory quiet hours every day, but they were usually scheduled before she'd had her coffee. And that woman could not get enough of that stuff. She had like, ten cups of coffee a day, and she told me being pregnant sure didn't slow down her coffee intake. Now that I think about it, that's probably the reason I babble. So really it was her own fault, but try telling Donna Smoak that anything is her fault."

Oliver let out a breathy noise that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle. It made my heart flutter for reasons passing understanding.

"Your mother probably needed all that coffee to keep up with you though. I can't imagine what you would have been like as a child."

I adopted a mock-insulted look. "Excuse you. I was a delightful child. Sure, I was taking apart the computers at school during typing class, but that was so they would run _faster_. I was doing the administration a favor, and for all my trouble they called my mother and had me suspended."

There was no mistaking it now. He let out a genuine laugh. "You got suspended for taking apart your school's computers?"

I shrugged. "I guess it was part of my own childhood rebellion."

"Your parents were lucky, then. My parents had to deal with me ditching school to get drunk and smoke pot in the woods behind my house."

"Ah, yes. I seem to remember a few years back when you were arrested for peeing on a cop?"

He made a face. "OK, well I think we've gone a bit far off topic. We were originally talking about Ray and his ugliness."

I laughed and gently swatted his shoulder. "I told you, he's not ugly!"

"Then why don't you want to go out with him?"

That question quickly sobered me. The smile melted off my face and I glanced down at my lap, pretending to be absorbed in the small, hand-sized notebook I'd pulled out of my lab pocket. "I don't know," I hedged. "I guess it's just been a while since I've been on a first date."

If Oliver thought there was something weird about my sudden change of mood, he didn't say anything. Instead he just cocked his head to the side. "How long is 'a while?'"

It was the same question Digg asked me the night I met Ray, only worded differently. Digg reminded me that it had been five years since that horrible day, but in reality my life had changed long before that.

"Seven years," I finally answered.

I forced myself to look up, and Oliver's eyes were pretty wide, to say the least.

"You're kidding, right?" he demanded. "You haven't been on a first date in _seven years_?"

I immediately felt defensive, and crossed my arms across my stomach, like I was trying to protect myself from any perceived accusations. "Why is that so weird? I'm a surgeon with irregular hours. That doesn't leave a lot of time for a social life."

"Yeah, but _still_. You must have at least gone on a random coffee date or something. I refuse to believe someone as beautiful and smart as you hasn't gone on a date in seven years."

The blood rushed to my face at his words and I looked down at my lap. "Yeah, well it's true. I'm a little out of practice."

He was silent for a minute, and because I refused to look at him I couldn't really read his face. Then, finally he said, "OK, well you're just going to have to do what we do in the Army whenever we're out of practice."

I finally looked up at him. His face carried a determined smile, one that I didn't necessarily trust. "Oh?" I asked warily. "And what's that?"

"Training," he answered simply. "Every day after you do whatever it is you need to do with your patients, you're going to come to my room and we're going to do date training. We'll call it DT, because everything in the Army needs an acronym."

My lips tightened into a thin line. "That sounds like a terrible idea," I told him bluntly.

"No it doesn't," he insisted. "Look, I'm going to be stuck in this hospital bed for the foreseeable future. I need something to do besides watch German soap operas and little girl films. And you need practice for when you finally decide to stop being a nun and get out there. And I just happen to be a dating expert."

I snorted. "I don't know if you're so much a _dating_ expert as an expert of...other...things."

He smirked and for reasons passing understanding the expression made my pulse race. "Well yeah, I _am_ a pro at those things too. But right now you need my dating expertise more than anything."

I rolled my eyes, trying to ignore my fluttering heart beat. "I don't need any of your expertise, dating or otherwise."

"Yes you do. Come on, Doc. It'll be fun."

I twisted my mouth and regarded him with a quizzical look. "Out of curiosity, just what exactly would DT entail?"

"You'd come here every day after you do your doctor thing and then we'd go on some hypothetical dates and stuff. If there's one thing the Army has taught me, it's that you learn by doing."

"So what, I'll just hang out in you room for hours at a time, sipping on coffee and pretending like I'm going on a date with some random hypothetical stranger?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

His transparency made me laugh in spite of myself. "This is sounding an awful lot like an excuse for you to meddle in my personal life."

He grinned at my laugh. "But you'd also get some valuable life experience out of it."

I don't know what it was. It might have been the smile that graced his handsome face. It was such an easy, open expression. It felt the exact opposite of the turmoil raging inside of me almost on a daily basis. There was a part of me that just craved to be closer to that light after being shrouded in darkness for so long.

"Fine," I finally relented.

His smile widened and I felt like I was stepping headfirst into the sunlight after years of cave dwelling. "Awesome. We will start tomorrow."


	6. Chapter 6

"So," my mother trilled in that upbeat voice of her that sometimes made me want to rip my eardrums out, "have you met any men lately?"

I sighed and buried my face into my hands. She was gazing expectantly into the computer camera, and even from all those miles between us, I could feel her eyes boring into my skin.

"Why is everyone all of a sudden so morbidly interested in my love life?" I demanded. "You, Digg, Oliver — "

"Wait, who's Oliver?" she demanded.

"No one," I said firmly. "Just a nosy patient."

She didn't bother shielding the disappointment in her eyes. As a Jewish mother, she was eternally confused by the fact that I became a doctor instead of marrying one. "Well, honey, are you at least putting yourself out there?"

"Moo-oom," I protested. "I really don't want to talk about this, OK?"

But Donna Smoak had never really listened to me before in her life and she wasn't about to start now. "Darling, it's been such a long time since Cooper, and — "

"Stop." I held up my hand in front of the camera to prove how much I meant it. "I mean it when I say I don't want to talk about this."

She sighed, but took a different tack. "John sent me an email the other day. He says you haven't been sleeping all that well."

"I'm a doctor," I deadpanned. "The times I get to sleep are weird and erratic."

"He's saying the nightmares are back."

I crossed my arms over my chest. The nightmares had never gone away, but I didn't say that to her. She was already over worried that I was at an Army hospital in a foreign country. I didn't need to tell her that her daughter was an incurable basket case who was just a silk thread away from a mental break at any given moment.

"I'm fine," I insisted. "Look, Mom, I have to go, OK? I have to be at the hospital early tomorrow, so — "

"Wait!" she cried. I stilled my hand over the mouse that was going to hang up on the call. "I just had one last question."

I waited not-very-patiently for her to continue. She made a show of sucking in a very deep breath before she plowed on. "Honey, I really, _really_ want you to consider coming home this year for Thanksgiving."

"No."

My reaction was fierce and immediate. There was no way in hell I was coming home for Thanksgiving. Absolutely no way.

"Felicity, it's been five years!" she shouted. "You haven't been home for Thanksgiving for five years and I think it's time that you — "

I didn't let her finish. I hung up on the call before she could try and guilt me into coming home on the worst day of the year. With more force than necessary, I closed my laptop and pushed myself away from the desk.

I was _so sick_ of everyone in my life, especially the ones closest to me, telling me it was time to move on. Yeah, five years seemed like a long time to everyone else, but they weren't living in this perpetual hell. They weren't haunted by exploding engagement rings in their nightmares, and they weren't the ones who spent their days stitching up soldiers, just like…

I stopped myself from trailing down that particular line of thought. No, I wasn't going to do this. I wasn't going to dwell. I wasn't going to think about it, and I wasn't going to let my mother, Digg or anyone else push me around on this. This was my business, not theirs.

I started getting ready for bed, forcing myself to think of anything else. They meandered down the memories of my day before they finally landed on Oliver and his date training. Or DT, as he liked to refer to it, apparently.

My palms tingled as I brushed my teeth, just thinking about it. I tried to convince myself that the sensation and the butterflies in my stomach at the thought was just nervousness, having to confront the fact that I hadn't been on a date for so long. But I also would have been lying if I didn't also admit that part of the shivers came from thinking about spending extended periods of time with Oliver Queen.

I shook my head angrily, as if my brain were an Etch-a-Sketch and by shaking it I could erase the images of his cheeky smile. What was wrong with me, I asked myself. Sure, he was an incredibly attractive man. There was no denying that. But he was still a patient. He was a soldier. He'd recover then he'd move on.

Besides, he was an undercover billionaire. I had about a zillion issues and the last thing I needed was one more, especially one as complicated as he was.

The next day, I got to work determined to fill my days entirely with surgery, and for the first ten hours I was generally successful. But when it came time to start rounding on my patients in the evening to make sure they were set, I found myself taking way more time with each of them than was actually required.

But sure enough, I couldn't avoid him forever. I resigned myself to this knowledge as I walked into his room, the last patient of the day.

Sure enough, he was waiting for me, sitting upright in his bed with a big grin on his face. "Well hello, Doc. I was beginning to think you'd forgotten all about me."

I glared at him over my glasses. "I have to examine you first," I told him flatly.

But my tone didn't deter his cheerfulness. I slowly went about the examination, checking his heartbeat, his glands, every level his monitors showed me. When I was finished and there was nothing else I could check, I resignedly returned the chart and plopped down on the seat next to his bed.

"OK," he said, diving right in. "First things first. What do you know about first dates?"

"That they should be avoided at all costs," I deadpanned.

He nodded as if I hadn't even spoken. "Exactly. First dates are about getting to know the person you're on a date with. But they're also about setting good first impressions. So while you're trying to get to know the person you're on a date with, you're also trying to project an image of yourself that is desirable enough for the person to want a second date. It's a delicate juggling act."

It's actually a waste of time, I thought to myself, but I kept my mouth shut.

"So keeping that in mind, let's go ahead and pretend like we're on a first date." He took a deep breath, like he was getting into character. It made me roll my eyes. "Hi, Felicity."

I raised my eyebrows in confusion. "Wait, who are you supposed to be in this scenario? Are you pretending to be Ray or something?"

"I don't know Ray. So I'm just going to be myself and you're going to be yourself and we're going to pretend like it's a first date and while it's happening I'll point out things you can do to make a good first impression or to get to know the other person better."

I huffed and slumped in my seat, crossing my arms over my chest. Why in the world did I agree to this ridiculous exercise in the first place?

"OK, so let's start again. Hi, I'm Oliver."

I shot him a glare. "Seriously?"

He quirked any eyebrow upward. "First piece of advice. You don't want to look sullen or angry or hostile because it just makes the person you're with feel like you don't want to be there."

"I _don't_ want to be here," I pointed out.

He just continued to stare at me like I hadn't said anything at all, but I let out a sigh. "Hi, I'm Felicity."

"Nice to meet you," he grinned and I felt my icy annoyance slowly start to melt. "How are you doing, Felicity?"

I sighed. "OK, I guess…"

"What did you do today?"

God, if this really was a first date in real life, this would have been boring as hell. "I repaired a torn meniscus. Then removed an abscess from an infected kidney."

Oliver fixed me with a reprimanding stare. "Felicity," he warned. "You're really not making any effort."

I grumbled petulantly for a moment, then let out another sigh. "I just did a lot of surgical repairs today. Fixing up guys who needed follow-ups and stuff. It was a pretty light day, all things considered."

His face melted back into that easy-going smile and despite how much I did not want to be there, I felt myself reluctantly getting sucked into his magnetic draw. "Fixing people is a light day? Wow, I hate to know what it's like on a heavy day."

The corners of my lips quirked upward. "Yeah, heavy days aren't...pleasant." I pulled myself away from that topic of conversation. After all, we were pretending this was a first date. No heavy things allowed. "Anyway, how was your day?"

"My day? Oh boy, it was crazy," he shook his head. "Georg and Adelina got into a huge fight over the fact that Adelina's baby wasn't Georg's, even though _everyone_ knows the real father is Franz, who is Georg's arch nemesis when it comes to the business. But Adelina only slept with Franz because she thought Georg was dead, so really he can't fault her for that. She wasn't cheating, but she did lie about paternity, so that's fair game."

My eyebrows shot up my forehead in confusion. "Huh?"

"It was on that German soap opera that's on at 2 p.m.," he answered. "I've settled on that show during the day because they use beginner's German and I can sort of keep up with what's going on if I pay attention."

I let out a surprise laugh. "You spend your days watching German soap operas?"

"Well there's nothing else to do when you're confined to a hospital bed all day," he grinned. I felt myself grinning back at him.

"OK, well then tell me what you would have been doing if you weren't confined in a bed. If you were back at the FOB, or even if you were back in Starling. What would you have done today?"

He pursed his lips and looked up at the ceiling. "Hmm. Well if I were back at Fenty, I probably would have spent the day on patrol with my squad. Then barring any major happenings, we would have spent the afternoon training with the Afghans, and then we would spend the evening winding down with target practice."

My brows furrowed. "How is target practice winding down?"

"They were teaching us how to use bows and arrows," he answered. "It was actually a lot of fun. It takes skill and patience and strength. By the end of it, you're exhausted and you fall right asleep."

"Interesting."

"And if I was in Starling…" he sighed, and his expression looked clouded, something that concerned me. "If I was in Starling, I'd probably be getting ready to go out with my best friend."

His response made me cock my head to the side. "How come you look so glum about it? Is it because you miss it or something?"

He didn't answer immediately. He stared at his hands and I could almost see the gears in his brain winding up as he was trying to come up with his answer. "In a way, I do miss it. I miss Tommy and I miss Thea and I miss being carefree. But...I guess I'm also kind of ashamed."

Well that was surprising. I didn't pry any further in case he didn't want to talk about it, but my prodding wasn't required anyway.

"Before I joined the Army I was just your typical, run-of-the-mill billionaire spoiled brat who did anything he wanted and got away with it. For years, it was just Tommy and me, running around town, getting drunk and sleeping around."

Well so much for keeping first date topics light. We'd wandered so deep into heavy territory that there really was no turning back at this point. So I asked the only question that I could.

"What made you decide to join the Army, then?"

He rubbed his hands over his face and I realized that there was a bit of stubble growing across his jaw. And instead of taking away from his incredible looks, it made him look that much more rugged.

"I cheated on my longtime girlfriend," he admitted. "Her name was Laurel Lance. I got drunk one night and I slept with her sister. She walked in on us the next morning."

I don't know why, but I was holding my breath. Hearing this didn't surprise me, especially given everything I'd read and heard, but the look on his face was so forlorn that it made me want to wrap my arms around him and run my fingers through his closely-shorn head until the ridge between his eyebrows melted away.

"Laurel couldn't even look at me when she broke up with me. But one thing she said really stuck. She said that for so long she had believed I was capable of being more than this selfish dick. She said she could see me doing more for others. But for the very first time, that morning when she walked in on Sara and me, she realized she was wrong."

My fingernails dug into my palm. I didn't know Oliver before, but my heart still ached for how those words must have stung him.

"I was a wreck after it all happened," he said quietly. "She was right, of course. I was a selfish dick and I deserved what she said. But I also wanted to prove her initial instinct. I wanted to show her that I really _could_ be more than that selfish dick. I thought maybe that was how I could win her back. So I joined the Army. And now here I am."

I let out the breath I'd been holding and unfurled my fingers. I knew all too well what it was like to still be in love with someone you'd lost.

But he still had a chance. And that look on his face made want to show him that.

I reached forward to take a hold of his hand. "Hey," I murmured, and he turned his morose gaze to me. "You're the reason your squad is still alive. You know that, right?"

The corners of his mouth lifted slightly, but the sadness in his eyes didn't go away. "Yeah. I know."

I squeezed his hand and fixed him with the sincerest stare I could. "Good."

* * *

If you had told me even just two months ago that I'd soon become somewhat friends with Oliver Queen, I might have laughed you out of the room. And if you had added that I would soon be cell phone friends with Thea Queen, I might have referred you to psychological services.

As it was, though, I soon had a standing phone date with the younger Queen sibling. Every Friday at nine p.m. local time, I could count that my phone would ring and it would be the same girl I had been terrified to talk to just four weeks ago.

I was sitting on my couch with a glass of red wine in one hand and the remote in the other when my phone went off. Pressing pause, I dropped the remote and reached for my phone. "Hey, Thea."

"Hi," she greeted cheerfully. Her demeanor had certainly changed since the first time I spoke to her, which was a great relief. "How's Ollie doing?"

"Didn't you get his last letter?"

Ever since the first letter, I'd been regularly taking down notes for him. His hands had steadied enough that he could have done it himself, but he claimed his handwriting was too terrible for anyone to be able to read. I reminded him that doctors weren't necessarily known for their penmanship either, but Thea had assured me I was far more gifted in that area.

"I did, but it was all about German soap operas," she complained.

"Well that's basically what his life has been confined to," I chuckled.

"But it doesn't mention how he's feeling or how he's recovering. I need to know these things otherwise I'm going to go out of my mind with worry!"

My mouth turned upward into a smile, even though she couldn't see it. "Well I can tell you from a purely medical standpoint that his blood pressure, heart rate, brain function and urine output are all normal and stable, which are excellent signs."

"Ew. I didn't need to know about his urine output."

I laughed. "His urine output, though, is a good indication of his kidney health."

"Then you could have just said that." There was a brief pause before she continued. "He did mention something about date training with you?"

Her voice went up at the end of her sentence, like it was a question.

I paused. DT with Oliver was...well, it was hard to describe it, even to myself. In the course of two weeks, I'd learned more about Oliver than I ever thought I would. For instance, I learned that his favorite color was green, and that he got a D in high school algebra, and the only thing he knew how to cook was chili. Despite my initial misgivings, those stolen hours I spent with the undercover billionaire had quickly become my favorite part of the day, something that got me through the sleepless nights and difficult surgeries.

But saying all that just made me sound insane. So I settled on the most vague explanation I could. "Your brother seems to think that I'm out of practice in the dating field. So he's taken it upon himself to be my coach."

She scoffed. "I don't know why you think he'd be a good coach. The last long-term relationship he had ended up in flames."

The corners of my mouth turned downward, almost as a reflex. Her tone and her dismissal sat wrong with me, for some reason, and I felt the urge to defend him. "He's not that same person, Thea," I said quietly. "He's worked really hard to grow out of being that person."

"How do you know?" she accused. "You've only known him for a few weeks. I've known him my whole life."

I sucked in a deep breath. How could I explain? How could I tell her that being in the military changed you? How could I make her see that wearing that uniform, carrying that weapon and watching people die in front of you just fundamentally turned you into a different person?

If there was anything I knew about the Army, it was that there really wasn't a way you could explain it to people who weren't so deeply a part of it. There were no words to describe what it felt like to wake up in the middle of the night to your loved one wrapping his hands around your neck because he was brain deep in a night terror from his time in country. You can't tell people what it's like to explain to five-year-old children that their fathers aren't coming back. And there's no adequate way you can express how it feels to walk around with an empty pit in your stomach when you realize you're alive because someone else laid his life on the line for yours.

"I can just tell," I finally answered. "He's different."

She didn't say anything for a moment and neither did I. I imagined what she must have been thinking. I wondered if she was worried that the brother who would return to her wasn't the brother she necessarily remembered. Maybe she was scared that she wouldn't be able to relate to him anymore. Maybe she was scared that he had ceased being her brother altogether.

But she didn't voice any of her concerns (if she had them). Instead, she finally said, "So do you have a concrete idea yet when he'll be coming home?"

Good, I thought to myself. Concrete plans. Medical things. I could do this. I could explain this. "He's recovering really well," I answered. "We're going to try and get him walking this week, and if he takes well to his physical therapy then I don't see any reason why he can't be home by November."

I heard Thea let out a whoosh of breath. "Good," she sighed. "Because Mom and Dad have been jumping down my throat for the past few days, telling me to get him to come home for Christmas. He hasn't been home for the holidays in five years."

I smiled wryly. Well that was something Oliver and I had in common.

"And my mother's really upset that she won't get to celebrate his birthday again either. Good thing she doesn't know he's going to be spending it in a hospital. That would break her heart."

"When is his birthday?" I asked.

"Next Friday. He used to be known for his birthday bashes, did you know? On his 21st birthday, he and his best friend Tommy rented out an entire city block. There was live music, food trucks, carnival games and _loads_ of booze. It was crazy."

The thought of Oliver spending his birthday in the hospital suddenly made my heart break too. Here was a guy known for having a good time but instead he'd probably be watching German soap operas all day without any reprieve.

But that inspired an idea.

"Hey, Thea? I might be able to come up with a plan."

* * *

The Monday after my conversation with Thea, I told Oliver that it was time for him to start walking around. His smile practically blinded me.

"Really?" he said excitedly. "I can finally get out of this hospital bed?"

His enthusiasm was infectious, and I found myself smiling back at him. "Yep. You'll have to take it easy for the first couple of days, but we can start building up your strength soon."

I spent the next ten minutes making sure all of his wires were untangled and his IV was attached to the mobile pole. Then I gently helped Oliver sit up and test his weight on his injured leg.

"How are you feeling?" I asked.

"Sore," he answered.

I nodded. This was common with a lot of bedridden patients when they first started moving again. He held tightly to my forearms as he stood up straight for the first time and it suddenly struck me just how tall he was.

"Wow," he panted. "I never thought how much work it would be just to stand."

"You're doing great," I told him. "Just stand there for a few seconds, get used to the feeling."

He did as he was instructed. He slowly let go of my arms and tried to plant himself steadily on the ground with his eyes closed. He breathed in deeply, like he was trying to prepare himself for something even bigger to come.

"How is your leg feeling?"

"It's stiff, but standing up like this is actually a relief."

He stood for a few more minutes, then started to take his first few steps. They were hesitant and unsure, and I wrapped my arm around his waist to steady him just in case. But he didn't stumble once, and he even made it all the way to the bathroom.

"Does this mean I don't have to use a bedpan anymore?"

"Yep. You are free to go to the bathroom on your own."

"Oh thank God," he mumbled under his breath.

I couldn't help but laugh at that.

He spent the next few minutes walking around his room, each step getting more and more sure. After twenty minutes of it, though, I could hear his shortness of breath and see the sweat beading on his forehead. Gently, I led him back into his bed where he fell back, still gasping for air.

"Shit," he panted as I handed him a cup of ice water. "Who knew that walking would be so much work? When I was in air assault school, I could do the 12-mile ruck march in an hour and a half."

"Try not to be discouraged," I said as I took a towel and wiped off his sweat. "Your body is doing a lot more work than you think. Since your leg is still healing, your heart is trying to get enough blood pumping through that area so it'll work properly, which elevates your heart rate and makes you sweat more. You are doing extremely well."

He smiled softly and reached forward to squeeze my hand. "Thank you, Dr. Smoak."

I felt my own heart leap into my throat, so I swallowed hard to push it back down as I returned the squeeze. "You're welcome, Oliver."

Our moment was interrupted when my beeper went off. I glanced down at the little box and frowned when I saw the numbers 9-1-1 cross the miniscule screen. It was coming from the nurse's station, so there was likely an incoming trauma.

"I have to take this," I muttered, quickly dropping Oliver's hand and heading out the door.

I ran as fast as my legs could carry me toward the pit doors. When I got there, Digg and Roy were already there, talking to the medic bringing in the gurney.

Then I caught one look at the bloodied face and I felt my stomach drop to my knees.

"Sergeant First Class Myron Forest, shot down in his helicopter by a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher," the combat medic hurriedly explained. "Sustained major injuries to his torso and head, lost consciousness en route."

The rundown of his injuries jolted me from my frozen state and I ran to catch up with the gurney, holding onto the handle. Digg threw a sharp glance in my direction.

"Felicity, I don't think — "

"What were his stats in the field?" I demanded, cutting him off before he could finish. I knew what he was going to say. I knew he was going to tell me to sit this one out, but like hell I was going to stand by and do nothing. I was not other people, damn it. I was a doctor, and I was going to act like one right now.

We rushed Myron into the OR as quickly as he could, and Digg and I scrubbed up. As I ran the rough soap over my arms, he looked over at me with concerned eyes.

"You don't have to do this, you know," he said quietly. "I can page Dr. Snow to scrub in with me."

"No," I said firmly. I couldn't explain why I felt responsible for Myron. I hadn't seen or talked to him in the last five years, but we were connected by a common loss. No matter how many miles or years separated us, I would forever be tied to him.

He was all I had left of the life that I could have had.

"I can do this," I told him. But really I couldn't help but think I had said those words to convince myself as well.

As soon as we were scrubbed, we strolled into the OR while the nurses gowned us. Then the minute I felt the snap of the gloves on my hand, I dove right in.

Digg and I had been operating together for years now. Even though he was older and more experienced, together we had developed an intricate dance, a shorthand and a code for knowing each other's next move. Which was why I knew to focus immediately on the injuries in his chest and abdomen while Digg went straight for Myron's head.

I was twenty minutes into removing a ruptured spleen when the monitor's long beep alerted us to Myron's flatlining. I whipped my head toward Digg.

"What's happening?" I demanded.

"I don't know," he answered. He moved from his place at Myron's skull and started chest compressions. "Quick, one of epi."

The nurse administered it quickly and we both watched the heart monitor to see if there was any change. When there wasn't, I took over chest compressions while Digg went for the defibrillator.

"Charge to one hundred," he directed the nurse. The charge sounded and I pulled back just as Digg pressed the paddles to Myron's bare chest. The surge of electricity forced his body to lift off the table.

I went back to chest compressions, but there was no change. Digg administered another charge, then another drug, but still nothing.

There's something that happens in operating rooms when everyone starts to realize it's a lost cause. There's a tangible sense of dread that starts to creep throughout the room, like a slow-moving fog. Everyone's limbs start to go limp. Everyone starts to pull away. The nurses start to look down, and the doctors glance at the clock, getting ready to call time of death.

But I refused to let the dread envelope me. I kept pushing the heels of my hands into Myron's chest, harder and harder, trying to get his heart to start beating again. "Come on," I grunted under my mask, keeping my eyes on his anesthetized face. "Come on, Myron. You do _not_ get to die. Not on my table."

For a few moments, it was just Myron and me there, alone in that room with the continuous sound of his flatlining heart serving as the soundtrack to my pounding fists. With each push, I could see our last encounter in my mind's eye. I watched as he walked off the plane behind the casket, as he gazed at me with the saddest expression I'd ever seen anybody wear. As he pulled the ring box out of his pocket and showed me what was inside.

For me that was the day my own heart had stopped beating. That was the day that time ceased to exist. Ever since then, I remained suspended, never moving forward and refusing to look back. And that was why I couldn't let Myron die. The minute he disappeared into a flag-draped casket, I'd be forced to move forward. My suspended state would change, and change was what I feared the most.

"Come on, Myron!" I screamed. I pressed harder and harder, ignoring the ache in my shoulders and the way my tears clouded my vision. "Myron, come on! You don't get to leave me here by myself! Please!"

"Felicity." I felt a hand on my shoulder, but I jerked it away and kept going. This wasn't going to end in another death. I refused.

"Felicity!" Digg's voice was insistent now, and he pulled me forcibly away from Myron. The minute my hands left him though, that was when I realized. He lay there on the table, his skull still open and half of his innards in stainless steel bowls, but the sound of the heart monitor was what drove it home for me.

He was dead. Gone. And I couldn't bring him back.

"Time of death, 18:43."

There it was. The final nail in his coffin.

Without another word, I rushed out of the OR, ripping off my mask and gloves and gown and throwing them into the medical waste bin before running. My feet kept pounding on the linoleum, pushing people out of my way until I burst through the doors of the hospital.

The minute the fresh air hit me, the bile bubbled up into my throat and I launched myself into the nearest bush as my lunch made a reappearance. When I was finally empty, I fell onto my knees and wept.


	7. Chapter 7

"So, Felicity. Tell me why you're here today."

I chuckled nervously, then fidgeted with my watch on my wrist. "Uh, honestly? I couldn't tell you."

Dr. Yamashiro fixed me with a penetrating glare, clearly meant to impart that she didn't believe me for a second.

I sighed and looked down at my lap. "My friend Digg is making me. He saw me crying after my...my friend died in surgery the other day, and he threatened to have me put on administrative leave if I didn't get help. I can't go back to surgery until I've been cleared."

"So it's safe to say that you don't want to be here."

"I told Digg I'm fine, but he doesn't seem to believe me."

She nodded, then scribbled something in the notepad on her lap. "Let's start easy, then. Tell me about your friend who died."

I swallowed. "Uh...well, he was shot down out of a helicopter and the injuries were too much. And I don't know if you could really consider him my friend anymore, though. It had been five years since I saw him. Well, almost five years. It'll be five years in November. The 26th of November."

"You remember the date?"

I nodded, turning my head away to stare at the coffee table between us. "Um, yeah. It was Thanksgiving. Cold as hell."

She didn't say anything, and my natural tendency to babble filled the silence.

"I actually hate Thanksgiving, you know? It's such a stupid, manufactured holiday. I mean when you think about it, it's a nationally-sanctioned day dedicated to gluttony. What's more, it's a nationally-sanctioned day dedicated to gluttony celebrating the fact that we stole an entire continent from millions of innocent people, all while systematically wiping them out."

"I thought Thanksgiving was about what the name implies," Dr. Yamashiro said with a raised eyebrow. "Giving thanks. Being grateful and acknowledging the blessings we have in our lives."

I scoffed. "Right, because there's so much to be grateful for."

Again, silence.

I took in a deep breath. "Look, all I'm saying is that I work in an Army hospital. Every day I watch guys roll in through the doors strapped to gurneys literally laying in pieces because they got blown to smithereens. It's my job to put them back together. It's my job to restrain them to the bed in the hopes that their night terrors don't harm anyone else or lead them to jump off the roof of the building. And then at the end of the day we're no closer to winning the war, and we're no closer to getting out. It's like an endless stream of death and destruction. I just don't see anything to be very grateful about."

I shook my head when I remembered the last Skype conversation about Thanksgiving. "And my mother...my mother just _expects_ me to come home for that day, like it'll be the easiest thing in the world. Like the last five years didn't happen, like I still have something to be grateful for."

"There's nothing?" she prompted. "Nothing that you can think of that you'd feel grateful for?"

"No." I crossed my arms over my chest. "Nothing."

She pursed her lips as she regarded me for a moment and I stared straight back at her, challenging her to call me a liar. Then, when it seemed she was finished with her quiet analysis, she scribbled again in her notepad. "Then I think for your homework, I want you to come up with a list of five things that you are grateful for."

My brows furrowed in confusion. "What?"

"I want you to spend this next week thinking of things that you're grateful for. I want you to _really_ examine your everyday life and find gratitude. They can be big things, they can be small things. But they have to be sincere."

"Are you serious? I just told you that there's pretty much nothing that I can feel grateful about."

"You have plenty to feel grateful about," she pointed out. "I can name a few off the top of my head. You should feel grateful to Dr. Diggle for forcing you to come to these sessions against your will because he cares about you and your mental health. You should feel grateful to your mother because not only did she raise you and give you life, she wants you to come home for the Thanksgiving holiday so she can take care of you. And most of all, you should feel grateful to me for not writing up your poor attitude and declaring you temporarily unfit to practice medicine, not just unfit for surgery."

My mouth snapped shut at that last one, my lips pressing into a thin, displeased line.

"I'm giving you the benefit of a doubt, Felicity. The first few steps in therapy are always the hardest. Isn't that what you're always telling your patients?"

I clenched my fists. My silence didn't seem to matter, though, because she already knew the answer.

"So follow your own advice. Take this week. Really look at your life. I'm sure you'll be surprised at what you find."

* * *

I may have been banned from the OR, but that didn't mean I still couldn't practice medicine. My temporary hiatus from operating meant I had more time for catching up on patient notes, consultations and practice stitches on the random person who wandered into the emergency room.

It also meant I had a more time to spend with Oliver on date training or on his physical therapy. As well as planning his birthday surprise.

In the three days since he started walking again, Oliver had regained an incredible amount of strength. By the second day he had done multiple laps around his room, and by his third day he could venture out into the hallways. By Thursday, he could walk without having to hold onto my shoulder for too long, but it was always there just in case.

"So tell me about your high school years," Oliver insisted as we took a lap down the abandoned hallways of Landstuhl. It was almost midnight, so most patients were asleep and the night nurses were scarce. We had the run of the place to ourselves, in a way, which made it kind of a perfect atmosphere for his continued physical therapy and my date training.

I shrugged at his question. "Not a whole lot to tell. I was the quiet kid in the back of the class who knew all the answers but kept them to herself. When I was valedictorian my senior year, everyone was like, 'Who is she?'"

"Oh, I don't believe that. There's no way you were invisible."

"I most definitely was, and I worked hard to have it that way, thank you very much. I didn't flourish under the attention, and I'd seen enough cheesy teen movies to know that the smart kids always got picked on. I just wanted to get through those four years with as little psychological damage as possible."

I stopped there, chuckling darkly at the irony. I managed to escape high school unscathed. Maybe all the shit I'd gone through in the past few years was the universe's way of restoring balance.

"Fine. Then what about college? What were you like in college?"

"I was a pre-med student in college," I scoffed. "I didn't do anything but study for organic chemistry and prepare for my MCATs."

"Oh come _on_ ," he sighed with exasperation. "You didn't do anything in college? That's the time for doing stuff! That's when you experiment with drugs and alcohol and casual sex! Are you telling me you didn't do any of that?"

I pursed my lips in thought. "Well, there was one encounter with a pot brownie my sophomore year. I didn't know it was a pot brownie and I ended up having an allergic reaction because of the nuts. Everything on my face swelled up and my date had to stick me with my epi pen because my fingers were too swollen to do it myself. Needless to say I didn't try another pot brownie and I definitely didn't go on a second date with him."

Oliver laughed at the story. "Well I guess I'm starting to see why first dates aren't really your thing. Was that the last first date you went on?"

I coughed and looked down at my hands. I could feel his gaze on me, which was why I was doing everything I could do avoid his face.

"No, actually," I answered. "My last first date was with a guy named Cooper."

"Cooper?"

"Yeah." I felt my throat suddenly getting dry, just thinking about him. The thumb on my left hand started rubbing the bare ring finger, like it always did when I thought about him. "He took me to the Fernbank Science Center in Atlanta. We snuck into the building after hours to the planetarium. We had a picnic on the roof, and he showed me all the constellations."

I didn't know why I was telling him all of this. I refused to talk or even think about Cooper most days, but here I was willingly reliving one of my most cherished memories, tinged with sadness of later loss. I swallowed hard, hoping to stop the tears from forming in their tracks.

"Wow," Oliver murmured. "That's a really impressive first date. I'm assuming there was a second."

I nodded, but didn't add anything. Instead, I cast my eyes around for any sort of distraction, and I immediately found one when I looked at the clock.

"OK, buddy," I said, pushing away my depressing thoughts and getting my mindset back to business. I steered him gently back to his room. "You've done enough walking for one night. It's time to get you back to your bed."

He grumbled under his breath, but did as I directed. When we got back to his room, I helped him settle into his pillows and covers before discreetly checking my watch. It read 00:01. Perfect.

Clearing my throat a little, I reached into my purse that I had surreptitiously left on the floor by his bed when I came earlier. Pulling out my tablet, I swiped it on and pulled up Skype.

"Doc?" Oliver asked. "What are you doing?"

I didn't answer him. Instead, the ringtone filled the silence and seconds later, Thea Queen's face filled my screen. Her eyes were brimming with excitement, and I could see she was biting down hard on her lips to keep from shouting.

I smiled and waved to her. "Ready?"

She nodded eagerly, and without explanation, I handed the tablet to Oliver. He took it with raised eyebrows, but once he saw his sister's face, his eyes went wide as quarters.

"Thea," he whispered in awe.

"Happy birthday!" she shouted. I felt my mouth turn up at the corners.

"How — how did you — "

"Felicity decided to let me bend the rules just this once," she answered. "You know, since it's your birthday. And you're getting old. I mean, look at you! You're thirty-one years old and bedridden!"

I chuckled and slowly backed out of the room, giving them privacy to talk. I closed the door behind me, then took a seat on the floor with my knees pulled up to my chest. Listening to their muffled, cheery banter, I allowed myself a very rare, heartfelt smile.

In the few weeks that I had known Oliver and his sister, I had learned very quickly that they were a close pair of siblings. He always looked out for her, both in her physical and mental well-being, and she adored him and looked up to him as her role model.

What must it have been like, I wondered to myself, to spend so many years away from home, not quite knowing when you'd see your sibling again? And what was it like for Thea, having to bear the burden of her brother's secrets?

Thinking of the Queen siblings made me think of my own family. My father had long since left, tearing a hole in our dynamic as well as in my mother's heart. And my mother, for as hard as she tried, raised me as best as she could on the scraps she earned as a Vegas cocktail waitress. But those long hours often left me alone in our tiny apartment, looking for anything that could occupy my time.

Digg warned me that isolating myself like I had after Cooper's death was dangerous. But thinking about it now, I realized I'd always really been alone. My time with Cooper had just been an anomaly, and the emotional wreckage in the aftermath was a result of opening myself up to companionship.

How could Digg think I'd want to go back to something that could cause me that much pain again? Were the risks even worth the rewards?

I sighed and pressed my head against my knees. Those were probably the sort of questions I'd get the answers to in therapy, I thought wryly to myself.

I gave them about an hour, because that was about how long my tablet's battery was going to last on video chat. When the hour was up, I gently knocked on the door before twisting the knob and entering.

The conversation seemed to have ended, but Oliver wasn't paying attention to me. His face was turned toward his dark window. His eyes were far away, but I could also notice their wet sheen, like he was holding onto tears.

"Hey," I murmured softly. When he heard my voice, he turned his head to me, and his beautiful face melted into a smile that took my breath away.

"Hey," he answered hoarsely. With quick hands, he wiped the burgeoning tears out of his eyes, then picked up the tablet from his lap and handed it to me.

I took it from him and put it away. Then I sat down in the chair next to his bed. "How are you? Are you OK?"

He nodded quickly and smiled wider, just as fresh tears sprang into his eyes. The sight of it made my heart ache. "I'm fine," he promised, though his voice wavered. "I am, I promise. I just hadn't realized how much I missed hearing my sister's voice."

The slight heartache in his tone triggered something in my chest, and I reached forward to squeeze his hand tightly. "She misses you a lot too, you know. But she's also really proud of you."

Oliver chuckled and reached up again to wipe the tears away. "Yeah, that's what she told me. Though I don't know how she could possibly be proud to have such a screw up for a brother. I mean for crying out loud, I can't even move out of the way of an exploding improvised device!"

I don't know what really possessed me. Maybe it was the fact that he was crying all while trying to hold onto a smile. Maybe it was the ache in his voice. Maybe it was the warmth of his calloused hand in mine. But my instinct in that moment was to comfort and protect. With my other hand, I reached forward and gently cupped his shadowed jaw, wiping an errant tear away with my thumb. The motion turned his eyes toward me, locking me where I was.

"She's proud because you're a hero," I murmured. "She's proud because if it weren't for you, four other men might have gone home in caskets that day. And she's proud because you stand up to threats instead of running away from them."

He didn't say anything, but he continued to stare at me with his clear blue eyes. The air between us, scant as it was, weighed heavily with intensity. I struggled for every breath I could draw into my lungs because his proximity, the warmth of his skin and the way he looked at me made it so hard. This moment was something deep and powerful. It was something I'd never experienced — not even with Cooper.

Finally, he broke the silence. With his eyes still boring into mine, he whispered, "Thank you, Felicity. Thank you for everything."

The way his voice caressed my name opened something in my heart I thought had long since gone dormant. It bloomed with warmth through my body, making every molecule inside of me feel light. If it weren't for his eyes and his hand anchoring me in place, I might have floated away.

I rubbed my thumb lightly over the stubble on his chin and smiled softly.

"You're welcome, Oliver."


	8. Chapter 8

"Here you go, sweetie," Lyla said as she set a mug of tea in front of me.

I nodded gratefully to her and reached around Sara, who sat in my lap, to grab the handle and lift it to my mouth. I took a careful sip of the hot liquid and savored the light spice as it coated my tongue.

It was a rare Sunday evening that I had all to myself, and I took up Lyla's invitation for a girl's night. No mashed potatoes, no surprise blind dates. Just a mug of hot tea and girl talk, in addition to some face time with my goddaughter.

"Cup!" Sara shouted as she pointed to the green mug on the table in front of her. She made clumsy grasps toward it, so I pushed it farther out of her grasp, hoping to prevent her from scalding herself.

"Very good," I murmured as I planted a soft kiss to the top of her head. "That is a cup."

"So tell me," Lyla said after she took a sip of her own tea. "How have you been?"

There was an extra emphasis on that last sentence, and I knew she didn't just mean in general.

I looked down at Sara, who had turned around to face and and was now playing with my necklace. I watched her hands stumble over the chain as I struggled to gather my thoughts.

"I don't know," I finally answered. "It's been...it's been quite a week."

She regarded me with sympathetic eyes. "Johnny told me about your friend. Myron?"

She said his name like a question, even though she already knew the answer. I let out a deep sigh and took another sip of tea. "Well, I'm finally in therapy. Just like Digg always wanted."

"Oh, hon. You know Johnny's just looking out for you. He's known you for so long that he kind of feels responsible for you, you know? Ever since Andy was killed in action, he's been looking for a younger sibling to take care of, and he picked you."

I looked down at Sara who finally managed to grab hold of my huge arrowhead pendant and started sucking on it. "You know, I was kind of thinking about that the other day. About growing up as an only child. For a really long time I wanted a sibling, and now I guess I have one. A huge, overbearing, overprotective one."

Lyla chuckled. "Yep. That's Johnny."

I gently pulled my pendant away from Sara's mouth and handed her a pacifier instead. "One of my patients has a younger sister. He asks me to write letters to her every week, since Landstuhl has such lockdown on electronics. And he just confides in her like I've never seen before." I smiled wryly at Lyla. "I bet he's the kind of guy who'd force his little sister into therapy if he thought she needed it."

She didn't take the bait. Instead, she looked at me with some kind of shrewd, calculating look that made me feel guilty even though I was pretty sure I hadn't done anything to piss her off. "You're writing letters for a patient?"

I shrugged. "Yeah. I mean, I can't operate. What else is there for me to do?"

She didn't acknowledge my statement, instead asking another question with narrowed eyes. "Is this the same patient that Johnny tells me you spend almost all your free time with? A CSM Jonas or something?"

"Yeah." I stared at her warily. "What's with the face?"

"Nothing. It's just…" she twisted her mouth, like she was struggling for a way to word what she was about to say. "Johnny's wondered about the two of you. Whenever he passes his room, you're there talking to him."

"So?"

"He says you're always laughing or smiling. And it's been a long time since he's seen you do either."

I felt a stab of irritation. She was beating around the bush and I didn't have the patience to figure out what she wanted to say. "Lyla, just spit it out. What are you asking me?"

She took in a deep breath. "What's going on with you and your patient?"

"Nothing," I answered, even though my palms suddenly became slick with sweat. "Seriously, there's nothing going on between Oli — I mean, Jonas and me."

In all honesty, I'd been avoiding thinking about it. Every so often when I had down time, or when I was about to go to sleep, my mind went back to Oliver's blue eyes, magnified in intensity by the tears swimming in them. I remembered sharply how it felt to have his gaze lock me in place, how my heart stuttered when he said my name.

But here Lyla was, shoving it in my face and asking me the questions I didn't know how to answer. Questions I wasn't entirely sure I wanted answers to.

Neither of us said anything for a prolonged moment. Sara didn't seem to notice, on the other hand, as she squirmed in my lap and begged to be let down. I lifted her under her arms and put her down on the floor and she immediately scooted away on all fours toward the play area set up on a blanket for her in the corner of the living room.

I watched her go as Lyla finally broke the silence. "Well, Felicity. For what it's worth, Johnny says you act differently when you're around him. That you act more like the person you used to be five years ago. And sometimes, when you two are talking about Jonas' progress, he can see a glimmer in your eyes that he's missed seeing. So what I'm saying is...maybe it wouldn't be so terrible if there really was something going on between you and your patient."

I whirled around to face her, an incredulous look on my face. "Are you crazy?" I demanded. "That would be wrong on so many levels!"

"How so?" she challenged.

"Well for one thing, he's my patient!"

"For two more months at the most. Then he'll go home and continue his PT stateside."

"That's another thing. He'd go back stateside, and I'd stay here."

"You hate it here though. You hate it in Germany, don't say that you don't. The only reason you're here is because you don't want to be within a reasonable plane distance of your mother. And quite honestly, that's a stupid reason to stay anywhere."

I clenched my jaw. "That's not the _only_ reason."

She crossed her arms across her chest. "All right, fine. Name another reason."

We stared off at each other for several seconds before I finally looked down in defeat, and she knew she had me.

"Whatever," I muttered. "My original point still stands."

"Actually it doesn't," Lyla smirked. "I believe I refuted the two arguments you posed, and I was just about to refute whatever else you come up with."

"Oh yeah? Well how about this one: he's still in love with his ex-girlfriend."

She opened her mouth and was about to say something, but she was interrupted by a series of long, monotone beeps and her spine stiffened. We both knew it was the ringtone that came from her ARGUS phone, and a call this late meant all was not right in the world of spooks.

"Michaels," she answered. Her brows furrowed as the person on the other end spoke and she remained silent. After a solid minute, she replied, "Understood. I'll be there in ten minutes."

I was about to grab my bag and head out when she hung up and stopped me with a hand on my wrist. "Wait, Felicity. I need a favor."

My eyebrow quirked upward. "What kind of favor?"

"Could you stay here and watch Sara while I'm gone? I don't know how long this is going to take and Johnny isn't due back until eleven. Please? It's too late for me to call any of her regular babysitters."

My eyes softened and my expression relaxed. "Of course," I told her. "Any excuse to get to hang out with my favorite girl."

"You're a lifesaver," Lyla gushed as she reached forward and gave me a hug. "She's got a bottle ready on the kitchen counter next to the microwave. Give it to her in an hour to help her go to sleep. If you need anything else, just call Johnny."

"Will do," I answered.

Lyla flashed me another grateful smile before she grabbed her coat off the rack by the front door. Then she rushed over to give Sara a kiss on the head and said, "Mommy loves you. Be good for Auntie Felicity." And with that, she rushed past me, grabbing her ARGUS phone and her keys on her way out the door.

When she was gone, I got up and joined Sara in her corner, and she happily welcomed me to her land of blocks and light up toys. She batted around a ball with holes of different shapes she was supposed to match for a little while, then moved on to a barnyard toy with huge buttons that made different animal noises.

After an hour, she started to get fussy, so I retrieved her bottle and settled on the couch with her, chugging down her milk. She only had a few more droplets left before her eyes started to droop and she had completely fallen asleep by the time the bottle was finished. Gently, I pulled it away from her lips and held her to my chest as I rubbed and patted her back. She let out the tiniest, cutest little burp in the world, still fast asleep.

With her still settled against me, I lowered myself across the couch until we were both lying down, my arm curled protectively around her. Gazing down at her sleeping figure, I thought not for the first time how lucky Lyla and Digg had it. Sure, they'd both been through their own hell when they were in the special forces, but they made it out the other side, still in love and with a baby on the way.

Sara was a testament to their strength. She was a symbol of their love. She came into the world because they were both brave enough to overcome everything that got in their way. And in a lot of ways, she acted as their guardian, keeping them sane and grounded despite all the death and destruction they'd seen while they were in the Army and in their respective jobs.

I pressed a kiss to her soft forehead and snuggled in closer. I wasn't as strong as either of them. I couldn't be. If I had been, then maybe I would have had my own Sara, my own tiny little talisman to protect me from the horrors I saw, day and night.

As it was, I was going to have to settle on borrowing her for a night. And it was that thought I held onto while I drifted to sleep with her tiny body nestled in my arms.

I woke up a few hours later to a gentle touch. Digg was smiling, crouched next to me on the couch. Sara had shifted slightly in her sleep, but she had pulled in closer to me, her tiny hands clutching onto my sweater.

"Hey," I rasped.

"Hey," he answered. "Lyla left a message for me. Thanks for taking care of Sara. We really owe you one."

"No you don't. You never have to twist my arm to hang out with her."

I shifted slightly into a more upright position, which only made Sara cling tighter. Digg chuckled and he lifted her out of my arms into his own, which made her fuss a little in her sleep until he cuddled her into his gigantic biceps. The minute she felt she was settled, she quieted down, going back to her deep sleep.

"Any major incidents?"

I shook my head. "Nope. She was an angel, as usual."

"And how are you feeling?"

I cracked my neck. "A little sore," I admitted. "But I was sleeping at a weird angle."

Digg chuckled. "You know, Felicity, I think that might be the first time I've seen you sleep without any nightmares."

I rolled my eyes. Knowing Digg he was going to find a way to chalk up this coincidence to my continued friendship with Oliver and he was going to tell Lyla, and Lyla was going to be even more insistent.

But for tonight, I'd leave it, because I finally found the third thing on my list I was grateful for. I heaved myself off the couch and leaned forward to press a kiss to Sara's head.

"I'm going to head out," I told him quietly. "Tell Lyla I'll see her soon."

"Yeah. Good night, Felicity."

"Night."

* * *

"So, tell me, Dr. Smoak. What are you grateful for and why?"

I took a deep breath. "Well like you said last time. I'm grateful for Landstuhl because working here means I have a way to support myself and to do something I'm genuinely good at. And as much as I gripe about it sometimes, it means I am making a difference in some of these soldiers' lives."

Dr. Yamashiro nodded approvingly. "Good. What else?"

"And I'm grateful for Dr. Diggle. He's been my best friend for ten years, he's put up with all my bullshit, and he's always looking out for me. Even if I don't necessarily want it."

"Yes. And the last thing?"

I took in a deep breath. "I'm grateful for my goddaughter, Sara. She's Digg's kid and she's fourteen months old, but she's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. She has these huge brown eyes and this fuzzy head with curls sprouting off it, and she's just so...trusting."

She smiled at me, tacitly telling me to continue.

"She fell asleep on me the other night when I was watching her, and I fell asleep with her. And when Digg got home, he told me it was the first time he'd seen me sleep when I didn't wake up from a nightmare."

"And why do you think that is?"

I shrugged, at a loss for words. "I'm not sure. I just...there's something calming about her, I guess. She's so innocent. She's still small and unbroken. She's a clean slate." I looked down at my hands laced in my lap. "Sometimes it's nice to reminded that there are still good and pure things left in this world."

Dr. Yamashiro cocked her head to the side. "Do you not count yourself as good or pure?"

I snorted. "No. Not even a little bit."

"Why's that?"

What a stupid question, I thought to myself. No surgeon in the world would ever describe themselves as good or pure. For me, this was doubly true.

"I've got blood on my hands. Blood that never comes clean, no matter how many times I scrub in."

Thankfully she let that one go and moved on to other things. "Well since you brought it up, let's talk about the nightmares."

My stomach tightened, like it was bracing itself for a straight punch. "What do you want to know?" I asked warily.

"Tell me about the most recent one."

The most recent one. I laughed bitterly as I described it. The most recent one started the same as all the others, but when Myron walked up to me and handed me the ring, he collapsed to the ground, wounds blooming all over his skin, deep gashes on his arms and legs and half of his skull bashed in.

I dropped to my knees to try and save him, but I could feel his heart stop beating underneath my hands. The sound of him flatlining jolted me awake, until I realized it was just my alarm clock.

When I finished telling her about it, she looked up from the notepad in her lap. "And you said it always starts out the same? On that hangar with Myron following Cooper's body off the plane?"

I nodded curtly.

"Why do you think that is?"

"I don't know," I snapped. I hated talking about the nightmares, and talking about this particular one had left me raw and aching. "You're the shrink. You tell me."

Her lips tightened into a thin line as she set down her pen. "All right. Your homework this week is to keep a dream journal. I want you to record every variation of the nightmare you ever remember having, and then for the next week I want you to record every time the nightmare occurs. Describe the scenes with as much detail as you can remember."

I clenched my jaw. Next to reliving the day that spawned the nightmares, this was the very _last_ thing I wanted to do. "And what is this supposed to do?"

"You're a surgeon, Dr. Smoak. What do you do when you encounter bleeding in the surgical field?"

"Trace it to the source," I answered automatically.

"Exactly. We're going to trace each variation of the nightmare to the source."

I didn't say anything for a long beat. Medically it made sense. But my skittish brain was having a minor panic attack at the thought of this assignment.

"I'm afraid this is only going to make the nightmares worse," I admitted quietly.

"You and I both know that it always gets worse before it gets better."

God, if I wasn't already at my worst, I _really_ wasn't looking forward to the next week.


	9. Chapter 9

I finished my session with Dr. Yamashiro over my lunch hour and went back to the nurses' station to pick up the charts I needed to round on everyone. When I asked Roy to gather them for me, however, he noticed my hands still shaking from my emotionally raw state.

"What's with you?" he demanded.

"Nothing," I snapped. "Just get me the charts."

He scowled at me but did as I asked, letting the charts drop to the counter with a loud and heavy thud. "There, Blondie," he sneered.

"Whatever," I muttered as I took the charts into my arms and started on the rounds.

It was in the middle of the afternoon, so most of the patients were awake by the time I got to their rooms. I worked quickly and methodically, measuring their stats and recording my observations before moving onto the next one.

Floyd Lawton was the last patient before I got to Oliver. He was sleeping when I got there, so I did my best to gently wake him.

"Sergeant Lawton?" I murmured, shaking him slightly on the shoulder. "Sir, I need you to wake up."

Suddenly both of his eyes flew open and with frightening speed, his arms reached up and wrapped themselves around my throat, his thumbs putting an insane amount of pressure on my windpipe, making it impossible to drag air into my lungs.

I tried to pull out of his grasp, but he was too strong. He toppled out of his bed and I fell onto the floor with a loud thud, my back on the ground and him straddling my chest. His hands tightened over my throat, and I thrashed, kicking at the bedstand, knocking over the lamp, scratching at his face in a blind panic. My eyes started to tear up as I coughed and struggled, but he wouldn't let up his chokehold.

Blackness started to edge out my vision, slowly encroaching on me. In my panic, I realized that I wouldn't be able to last much longer, so I struggled even harder. But it was no use. I couldn't grab any purchase and I didn't have enough air in my lungs to make any noise.

I felt myself gradually going limp when I heard it.

"Hey!" someone shouted. "Get off of her!"

The next thing I knew, someone had knocked Floyd Lawton off of me and the pressure on my wind pipe disappeared. I greedily drank in all the oxygen I could as I sat up and scrambled backwards until my back hit the wall.

When my vision finally cleared, I saw Digg, Roy and Oliver — still in his hospital gown — struggling to restrain Lawton and wake him up from whatever night terror he was experiencing. Finally, Roy slapped him hard across the face and his body went limp when he snapped out of it.

"What…" he said groggily. "What's going on?"

I didn't stay to hear how they were going to explain it to him. I couldn't. I was so terrified that it would happen again that I bolted to my feet and ran to the closest bathroom. The minute I reached the toilet, my stomach convulsed and I heaved the little lunch that I ate before my session with Dr. Yamashiro.

The heaving left me coughing and sputtering, and reminded me so much of how it felt to have Lawton's long fingers wrapped around my throat. The panic started to overwhelm me and it felt like all the walls in the tiny stall were closing in, threatening to choke off my air supply again.

"Dr. Smoak?"

My nerves had already been so frayed that I jumped at the sound of my own name. Turning around, I realized I hadn't closed the stall door in my rush to make it to the toilet bowl before I threw up everywhere, and that was why Oliver was staring at me kneeling in front of the toilet with concern written all over his electric blue eyes.

It was his eyes that did me in. The way he was staring at me, boring into me, my emotions already raw from my session and my brain jumpy and panicked from the choking incident. I was a complete and utter wreck and I didn't have anything in me at the moment that could hold me together.

I started crying. The tears just flowed like a waterfall, streaming down my face and I couldn't do anything to stop it. I couldn't do anything to quell the harsh sobs that ripped themselves from my oxygen-starved lungs. I felt so out of control of my emotions with Oliver Queen just standing there, staring at me that all I wanted in that moment was to disappear down a black hole and never return. To bury myself so deep and so far that I'd never feel anything. That I would cease to exist altogether.

But the next thing I knew, I felt a pair of arms wrap around my shoulders and pull me into a broad chest. I flinched at first at the touch, but when Oliver didn't let go, I settled deeper into them, his warmth a comfort to me as I cried.

"You're OK," he whispered into my hair and I shivered at the feeling. "You're OK. I promise."

And for the briefest moment, he was right.

I was OK.

* * *

An hour after my breakdown in the bathroom, Roy and Digg finally found me with Oliver's arms still wrapped around me. My sobs had finally gone away, mostly because my throat and vocal chords were so spent. Digg helped me to my feet and took me to an exam room to check on any lasting damage while Roy helped Oliver back to his room.

Digg was doing the routine examinations, checking the bruising on my skin, checking the inside of my throat to see if there was any major damage. I could feel my windpipe was swollen and it was hard to speak in anything above a rasp, but for the most part none of it was permanent.

When he was finished, he put his light back into his pocket. "Hey," he murmured. "How are you feeling?"

I shrugged. "It isn't the first time I've been choked by a soldier going through night terrors," I rasped. "It won't be the last either."

It was the sad reality of the job at Landstuhl. All of the doctors and nurses had chokehold safety training, but it had apparently been a long time since I'd had to do it. Time for a refresher course, it seemed.

"Yeah, but you never used to cry afterward," he pointed out.

I looked down at my lap, trying to avoid his gaze. It was one of my more embarrassing moments, and considering my particular strain of foot-in-mouth disease, I had a lot of them. I wasn't sure why, but Roy and Digg catching me at one of my most vulnerable moments was horrifying, but not quite as horrifying as the realization that I cried all over Oliver freaking Queen. In a bathroom stall that smelled like vomit.

Oh God.

When Digg realized I wasn't going to say anything, he sat down on the exam table next to me, his huge, warm hand resting on my shoulder. "Felicity, I can't even imagine what these past days have been like for you. I really can't. But you also have to realize that in the past few months, I've seen you laugh and smile way more than you had in the past five years. You even managed to sleep peacefully the other day."

I looked up at him with a raised eyebrow. "What are you trying to say?"

He shrugged. "I'm just saying that there's been a change, and you're more willing to show your emotions than you have been in the past. Letting yourself feel things isn't the end of the world. In fact, it's what helps the most when you're on your way to recovery."

I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath, shivering as the oxygen spread throughout me. "Then why does it feel like the end of the world?"

"Because it gets worse before it gets better."

I sighed. All of a sudden, I was just exhausted. Confronting my fears with , living them out with Floyd Lawton, then crying in Oliver Queen's arms took so much out of me. The walls I usually had up to guard my heart were torn down, and all that was left was the truth.

I leaned my head onto Digg's shoulder and he pressed his cheek against the top of my head. We were silent for a long period before I finally spoke up.

"Sometimes I'm scared, Digg," I whispered. "Sometimes I'm scared that I gave Cooper so much of my heart that he took it with him when he died. Sometimes I'm scared that all of the parts that made me human aren't there anymore and now I'm just this shell.

"It's why I haven't gone home in five years. My mother, who's known me all my life, who worked so hard to raise me, would be so scared to see what her daughter's become. To see that I've just turned into this lifeless robot. It would crush her."

"Or," he interrupted, "she might just miss her daughter and know that she's in pain and want to take care of her. Felicity, if there's one thing I know about being a parent, it's that all you want to do is to take care of your child. When they're in need, when they're happy, when they're sad...you want to be there for them in any way possible.

"Your mother just wants to be there because she loves you and she wants to take care of you. And the same goes for Lyla and me."

Silent tears started streaming down from the corners of my eyes, but I didn't do anything to stop them. I just let them fall onto my wrinkled scrub top while Digg wrapped his arm around me and breathed, letting me lean on him for support.

He eventually had to leave for a surgery, but he told me that under no circumstances was I allowed to practice medicine while he was gone. He ordered me to take it easy for the rest of my shift, which I was only too happy to do. My emotional roller coaster of a day left me completely exhausted, so I went to the one place I knew I could be alone: the helipad.

The sun was dipping just below the horizon at Landstuhl and I glanced down at my watch. I realized it was eight a.m. in Vegas.

Digg's words about my mother kept rolling over and over in my head as I stared at my phone, debating endlessly if I should call her. But finally I bit the bullet and hit the call button.

"Hello?"

"Mom?" My voice was still hoarse from the incident, but it sounded even rougher from the tears I struggled to rein in at the sound of her voice.

"Honey? Are you all right? You sound sick."

"I'm all right," I answered, quickly swiping at my eyes. "There was just an incident at the hospital earlier."

"What kind of incident?"

I took in a deep breath. Lying didn't seem like an option at the moment, so I told her the truth. "A choking incident. But I'm fine, I promise. Digg took care of me."

The sound of a sharp, sucking breath pierced through my ear on the other end. "Oh, Felicity," she sighed. "You sure you're all right?"

"I am," I assured her, the tears still coming despite my best intentions. "I just wanted to hear your voice. I miss you."

"Sweetheart, I miss you too."

"And...and I'm sorry about hanging up on you the last time we talked. It's just that — "

"I know," she said quickly. "Felicity, I know that it's hard for you, and I don't hold anything against you for it. I just wanted you to think about coming home for Thanksgiving because I know it's a difficult time of year for you and I'm your mother. I want to be there for you to take care of you when things get tough."

I bit down on my lip and I started crying even harder. "I know," I said, my voice even more wobbly now. "I know you do, Mom."

"You might be an adult, but you'll still always be my little girl."

I nodded, even though she couldn't see. "I promise I'll think about Thanksgiving, OK? I love you."

"I love you too."

We exchanged goodbyes and I hung up, bringing my knees up to my chest as I wiped my eyes again. I don't know how long I stayed like that, staring out at the sunset, but it was apparently long enough to get lost in my own thoughts because I didn't even hear him come up behind me until he spoke up.

"Hey."

I jumped in shock at the sound and turned to see Oliver in his hospital gown and a pair of sweatpants that he must have charmed a nurse into swiping for him. The idea made me want to laugh and roll my eyes at the same time.

"What are you doing here?" I demanded when he walked closer and took a seat next to me. "This area is for authorized personnel only."

"It's a helipad," he deadpanned. "I'm an air assault soldier. It's not like I'm going to freak out at the sight of a helicopter coming this way."

I rolled my eyes at him before turning my head back to the sunset. "If you get caught, you have only yourself to blame."

"No one's looking for me anyway."

We were silent for a prolonged beat before I realized that I never made it to his room for rounds. Lawton had been the last stop before Oliver. Instead of rounding on him he got to round on me, comforting his crying doctor in a cramped bathroom stall. Oh, the horror.

"Sorry about that, by the way," I tried to say it offhandedly, but my heated cheeks betrayed my nonchalance.

His brows furrowed in confusion. "Sorry about what?"

"About...earlier." I motioned with my hands, trying to mime hugging and comfort and crying. "With the choking and the crying and the snot and the vomit." I shook my head when I realized I'd actually said the word vomit, and it didn't matter if I was a doctor, it was still embarrassing as hell. "I'm going to stop talking now."

Oliver let out a breathy chuckle. "You don't have to apologize. I've comforted many a crying girl in a bathroom before. Granted they were usually drunk, but…"

I found myself laughing at that. "Well I count myself in a very privileged group, for sure."

He smiled at me. "So, I realized earlier that we didn't get our date training in for the day."

I stared at him. "Seriously?"

"It's important to train every day," he said in a solemn voice.

I shook my head, but a soft tendril of warmth and comfort started to curl through me. There was something calming about being in Oliver's presence, and I wanted to hold onto any excuse I could to stay as long as possible.

"You're the toughest coach I've ever had," I teased. "Fine. What's next in the training regiment?"

"Well let's start slow. How was your day?"

I snorted. "Oh? You mean other than the choking incident?"

He smiled. "Yeah. Aside from that."

My own slight smile melted away as I turned from him to stare at the horizon again, a deep breath escaping me. "Well," I began quietly, "I had another session with my therapist today. And since I know it's your next question, yes, I'm seeing a therapist. Even doctors need doctors. Don't judge me."

"I'm not judging you."

I turned sharply at him. "You're not?"

He shook his head. "Nah. My mom needed a therapist for a little while when her mom passed away. Then my sister started acting up when she was a freshman in high school, right around the time I left. My parents forced her to see someone and now she goes pretty regularly. And I've used the mental health services they have on post."

"Oh." The tension left my body and I turned back to the sunset. "Well OK then."

"So you had a session with your therapist today…" he trailed off, gesturing for me to continue.

I sucked in a deep breath. "I've been having nightmares for the better part of five years. She wanted me to talk about them. And they're…" I swallowed. "They're hard to talk about."

"You don't have to talk about them with me if you don't want to," he said softly.

"I know," I whispered. I closed my eyes, like I was trying to gather strength for what I was about to say next. "They're about Cooper. They're always about Cooper."

"The guy you used to date?"

I nodded. "I started dating him during my last year of residency out at a hospital by Fort Benning. He was a soldier, too. A ranger."

"Was?"

Tears sprang up in my eyes, sudden and burning and I couldn't do anything to make them go away. "Yeah," I rasped. "We'd been together for two years, and then the week before he was supposed to come home from a deployment in the Khowst Province, he got shot by a sniper."

I pressed my knees closer to my body, like if I could coil myself tightly enough I'd be able to disappear. But at that moment, a heavy, warm arm fell over my shoulders and pulled me in close to Oliver. I should have pulled away, but I needed something — _anything_ — to help me feel close to someone.

"I got the call two days after it happened," I continued, my voice still wavering. "His mom was the one who called me. She told me they were bringing his body back and she wanted me there because she didn't know if she could do it by herself. So they brought his body in with a Marine escort. On Thanksgiving."

Oliver's arm tightened around me, but it was too late. I was chin deep in the memories, close to drowning in them. There was no choice but to keep sinking.

"Myron, his best friend and squad mate, made the trip with his body. When he followed the casket off the plane, he walked up to me and pulled this...this tiny box out of his front pocket." I closed my eyes tight, watching the memory play out in front of me as my body trembled. "I'll never forget the look on his face when he handed it to me. He said, 'He bought this while he was over there. He was planning on using it to propose when he came home.'"

I could still see it all. The bright red of the stripes on the flag draped over his casket. The morose brown of Myron's eyes. The way my trembling hands gripped the tiny box and struggled to lift the lid. The way the muted pearl glinted in the early morning light. All of it came back with stunning clarity, like I was still there, most likely due to the fact that I relived the scene almost every night without fail.

Then the despair hit me, like a wrecking ball in my chest. It hit hard and fast and before I could stop myself, I was wailing. "But he never got the chance!" I cried. "He never got the chance to propose when he came home, because he came home in a coffin!"

Oliver pulled me until I was flush up against his body and I wept in his arms while he pressed his cheek to the top of my head, running his huge hand soothingly over my shoulder, down the length of my upper arm and back.

After a few more minutes of sobbing, I started laughing at the big, stupid irony of it all. "God, I can't believe this. I'm crying on you _again_. What the hell is wrong with me?"

"I don't mind it," he murmured.

My eyes eventually dried and my nerves slowed. By the time I'd fully calmed down, I didn't feel as tired as I expected to feel. Instead I felt an odd relief and a silent calm, curled in Oliver's arms and feeling his warmth and hearing his heartbeat.

"I guess this would have been a pretty shitty date if it happened in real life, huh?" I joked.

My head was still on his chest, so I heard the chuckle rumble through him and it sent pleasant shivers right through me. "Maybe if it was a first date. But if it was a fifteenth date then I think it would have been perfect."

I slowly pulled my head away from him and smiled. "Well, thank you anyhow. For listening, especially when you didn't have to."

The sun had just about melted into the horizon, but there was still a tiny sliver of it left, illuminating the sky with its pink light and turning the blue of his eyes into molten sapphires. Sitting there with his face so close to mine, his eyes boring into me made me feel that familiar weightless sensation I could only ever feel around him.

"Felicity," he murmured. "If you ever need to tell someone about your day, you can always talk to me. Always."

Words seemed inadequate at the moment. So I settled for a weak nod instead, then leaned my head against his chest once more.

We sat there on that helipad and waited together until the sun and its light had completely disappeared.


	10. Chapter 10

Two weeks after the choking incident, Dr. Yamashiro decided it was time to let me get back to doing surgery.

"Seriously?" I asked in disbelief.

She nodded. "Small procedures only. Appendectomies, shunts, et cetera. I still don't think you're ready to handle big traumas." Then she broke into a rare smile. "But you've been making a lot of progress, and I think it's time to let you back into the game and start you out slow."

"Making a lot of progress" to Dr. Yamashiro was actually code for six sessions in two weeks dedicated to nothing but reliving every single nightmare of the past five years. Those six hours were complete torture, but even I'd grudgingly admit it helped lessen their frequency.

I also attributed the fewer nightmares thing to Oliver. Dr. Yamashiro may have been the professional, but there was something so incredibly therapeutic about telling him everything. I trusted him because I felt safe whenever I was with him.

It was the first time in a long time that I could have said that about anyone.

But the fact that I was cleared for small procedures was still a victory in any sense, so when I was finished with my session, I strutted out of her office proudly, like a freshly graduated med school student.

Roy saw my approach and watched me warily. "What's with that face?"

"Get out your blue marker, Speedy, cuz I'm back in the game!" I crowed. "Yamashiro cleared me for small procedures finally, and thank God too, because I have gone way too long without digging through somebody's intestines."

He made a face. "Gross," he complained.

"Yeah, yeah," I waved my hand at him. "Anyway, let Digg know that the first appy that comes through that door is mine."

"OK, but at the moment," Roy reached behind him on the nurse's station and pulled up a stack of charts, "you have to start rounding."

I looked forlornly at him. "Speedy, all I've been _doing_ is stitches and rounding and consulting for the past few weeks. I need to start cutting!"

"After you round."

I pouted, but reluctantly took the charts from him. "When did you turn into a lifeless killjoy, Harper? Who hurt you?"

He didn't answer, but I didn't expect him to. So with a sigh, I went forth to round on the surgical patients.

The last one, as always, was Oliver. Since his room was right next to the nurses' station, I dropped off all the charts I was finished with before I went to his room, anticipating it would likely be a long visit. And though I was anxious to get my gloves wet again, I was also happy to spend time with my favorite patient.

Just as I hit the nurses' station to hand Roy the charts, a tall, dark-haired man leaned on the counter right beside me. "Hello," he greeted warmly.

I looked at him sideways, bemused by his general presence. "Hi," I answered.

"Listen, my friend and I are a bit turned around here, and I thought who better to direct us where we need to be than the most beautiful doctor I think I've ever seen in my life?"

I caught Roy's face and he made a huge show of rolling his eyes. I bit down on my lip to keep myself from laughing.

Then I turned to finally face the stranger who walked up to me. He wasn't exactly Oliver Queen, but he certainly was no slouch either with his dark hair and warm eyes and the way he effortlessly wore a sport coat with a pair of jeans.

"And how exactly can I help you?" I asked, a slight smile spreading over my face.

"Well giving us your name and number would — "

A hand came out of nowhere and smacked the man on the back of his head. He let out a yelp of indignation. "Jesus, Thea, what was that for?"

"For flirting with Ollie's doctor." I followed the hand back to the owner and realized it was none other than Thea Queen, standing in front of me scowling at her companion.

"Thea!" I cried in recognition and without caring how it might have looked to anyone else, I rushed forward and threw my arms around her neck. "Holy crap, what are you doing here?"

"It's a late birthday surprise for Ollie," she answered, returning my hug. "We would have come sooner, but it was the only time Tommy could get away from that stupid bar of his."

"Excuse you," he scoffed. "It's not a _bar_. It's a high-end club."

She shook her head and turned to me. "Anyway, could you tell us where his room is?"

"Sure. I'm just on my way there now. But you'll have to let me examine him first before you surprise him. Why don't you wait outside the door until I'm finished?"

"Yeah, and then afterward I can let you examine me if you like," Tommy winked.

I'd turned my attention back to Oliver's chart, but the loud shout told me Thea had smacked him once again. The thought made my lips quirk upwards.

With Tommy and Thea at my heels, I walked up to Oliver's room, his chart under my arm. They stayed outside the door when I opened it, well out of sight. He laid on his bed, staring up at the television, completely unsuspecting.

His face lit up when he turned and saw me standing in the doorway and my own face broke out into a smile. I couldn't help it — every time he looked at me with that brightness of his, I had to return it.

"What's up, Doc?"

"Nothing much," I answered as I walked forward and began my examination. "How goes it in the world of _Liebesbriefe_?"

"Oh, well you would not _believe_ what Georg is up to right now," he answered conspiratorially as I put my stethoscope up to my ears and dipped the bell underneath his gown. He breathed in deeply for me without even asking.

"Is he still trying to off Franz?"

"No! He's trying to impregnate Adelina's younger sister in revenge for Adelina's infidelity, even though she thought Georg was dead when she slept with Franz!"

I clucked and shook my head. "Poor Adelina…"

"I know," Oliver answered solemnly as he leaned forward and let me put the stethoscope to his back. "I mean, what does she even see in him anyway? You can totally tell he's got plugs, and that creepy mustache should have been the immediate tip off that he's a total douche saddle."

I quirked an eyebrow up at him. "Douche saddle?"

He shrugged. "My sister says it."

When I was finished with the examination, he turned off the television and I offered up my hands so he could take them and pull himself out of the bed. He made a few practice steps around the room. I couldn't help the swell of pride I felt when I saw how much stronger and surer his steps were. The strength in his legs were returning, and it was a good thing because he had such nice legs.

"Are you checking me out?" he teased when he saw my glance staying glued to his rather beautiful calf muscles.

"Yes," I answered unapologetically. "That is my job." And thank God for that.

"Uh huh." I stuck my tongue out at his sarcastic tone.

When he was finished walking around the room, he grabbed a sweater off chair and pulled it around him. "So, are you ready for the next round of DT?"

Ordinarily this was when we would take a few laps around the hospital and go through our date training. But considering who was waiting for him outside the door, I just smiled mischievously at him. "Actually, I have a bit of a surprise for you."

His brows furrowed in suspicion and before he could ask, I opened the door to his room and immediately Thea barrelled through.

"Ollie!" she shouted, knocking me out of the way to throw her arms around her brother's shoulders. Instead of being annoyed, I chuckled at her enthusiasm.

Oliver's eyes went wide. "Thea?" he gasped.

"And Tommy," the man himself grinned as he followed Oliver's younger sister into the room. When Thea finally released her older brother, Tommy stepped forward for his turn, wrapping his long arms around the taller man.

"It's so good to see you still in one piece," Tommy smiled. "When Thea told me you were in the hospital, I thought for sure you were dust."

"Thanks for the confidence," Oliver deadpanned. But even from far away I could see the spark of happiness in his blue eyes.

With his surprise safely delivered, I crept toward the door in the hopes of sneaking out without anyone noticing. But sure enough, Oliver caught me before I even touched the door knob.

"Doc, where do you think you're going?" he demanded.

I froze when he caught me. "Out," I answered.

"Why? Stay here! I want you to meet Thea and Tommy!"

"I've already met them."

He rolled his eyes. "You're not getting out of this. Come on, let's go to that crappy hospital cafeteria and get some Jell-O."

And soon Oliver was pulling away from his visitors and grabbing me gently by the wrist so I really didn't have any other option. With a sigh, I resigned myself as he dragged me away and led Thea and Tommy up to the cafeteria.

When we got there, I went and grabbed a few bowls of lime Jell-O because I knew it was Oliver's favorite. I returned with my bounty and Oliver smiled beatifically at me. I couldn't help but smile back.

Thea, on the other hand, didn't seem to have the same high opinion of the jiggly green substance as her brother did. "What the hell is this?" she demanded, a grimace written all over her face.

"A Landstuhl specialty," I answered as I grabbed a spoon and stabbed it into the gelatin.

"The breakfast of champions," Oliver added. "And lunch and dinner, actually."

He scooped up a spoonful from my bowl and I smacked him lightly on the wrist. "You have your own, mister," I chided. "Don't steal mine."

He answered with a cheeky smile, almost as if he knew I was powerless against that bright expression.

Smug bastard.

When I turned back to Thea and Tommy, I noticed they were staring at me with quirked eyebrows that screamed suspicion, so I quickly stuffed some Jell-O in my mouth in an attempt to stop whatever embarrassing ramblings might escape.

"So, tell me," Oliver began, not noticing the weird looks his best friend and his sister were throwing at him, "not that I'm not happy to see the pair of you or anything, but why are you here?"

Thea and Tommy exchanged glances and the former gave a quick nod. So the latter began the explanation. "Well when Thea told me you managed to get yourself blown up, we knew we had to see you no matter what to make sure they were taking proper care of you. We had to make sure the great Oliver Queen himself didn't come back to Starling as an amputee."

I rolled my eyes but didn't say anything. They probably didn't want to hear how hard I had worked to keep Oliver from actually turning into an amputee.

"Besides, we missed you," Thea added. "And with you gone, Mom and Dad are focusing all their attention on me and it's starting to get annoying."

Oliver laughed at that. "So then where does everyone think you are?"

"They think I'm here to investigate a possible investment opportunity for Merlyn Global in Germany," Tommy answered smoothly. "And that my old family friend, Thea Queen, wanted to tag along because she's never been before."

Oliver shot his sister a stern glare. "Hasn't school already started?"

She waved her hand, like that didn't matter in the slightest. "It's senior year."

I chuckled and Oliver turned his glare toward me. I turned up my hands in surrender at the look. "She's got a point, dude. Senior year is kind of useless."

Thea adopted a triumphant expression while Oliver just huffed.

"So tell us for real, Ollie," Tommy said, suddenly serious. "How are you really feeling?"

The man in question sucked in a deep breath through his nostrils. Without thinking, I reached under the table for the hand resting on his knee and laced my fingers through his, squeezing lightly in a show of support. He sent me a quick, grateful smile.

"The recovery process is slow," he replied after a beat. "I was starting to get a pretty serious case of cabin fever after the first week, but I've been walking for the past few weeks and Dr. Smoak here says I'm going to be with a physical trainer soon to get me back to where I was."

"And how about emotionally?" Thea prodded gently.

He smiled softly at his sister and for some reason it made my heart melt to see him so tender with her. "I'm good. No one died that day, and I still have all my limbs. In the Army, that's the most we can ask or hope for."

How well I knew that. But he must have known what I was thinking because it was Oliver's turn to squeeze my hand under the table. The tacit reassurance held the sadness at bay, for which I was grateful.

"OK, it's my turn for a question," he began in an obvious change in subject. "How are things in Starling City?"

"Well the party scene is infinitely more boring," Tommy replied. "I don't have my wingman to talk me up anymore."

Oliver chuckled. "Tommy, you never needed me to talk you up. You're a handsome billionaire, what woman isn't going to go for that?"

His friend grimaced in reply. "More than you'd think."

Maybe if he didn't use so many lame pickup lines that would never have worked on a woman with half a brain, he might have been able to get laid more than he had, I thought to myself, staring down at my Jell-O.

The table went silent and when I looked up, I realized they were all staring at me.

"I said that out loud, didn't I?" I sighed.

"Yep," Thea grinned. But she seemed to think it was hilarious, so no love lost with her.

"So tell me, Dr. Smoak," Tommy leaned forward, and immediately my guard went up when I saw his charm had increased by several billion notches, "as a woman of science and a woman of stunning beauty and a woman possessing much more than half a brain, how would I best go about wooing you?"

I couldn't help the involuntary quirk of my lips, but Oliver answered before I could. "Forget it, Tommy. She's way, way out of your league."

He said it lightly, but I noticed the way his shadowed jaw clenched.

What the _hell_ did that mean? I thought to myself, but I clamped down hard on my lips to make sure that thought didn't escape the confines of my brain.

But the brash teenager known as Thea Queen asked the question for me. "What are you saying, Ollie?" she teased. "That Dr. Smoak is too good for the likes of your charming, handsome, billionaire best friend?"

"Yes," he answered without even the slightest pause and I felt my face immediately redden.

I was saved from having to respond by the loud, repetitive beep at my hip. I glanced down and saw a 9-1-1 from Roy. Immediately following was a message that read, "Cutting time."

I smiled as I stood from my seat. "An emergency surgery's come up," I told my Jell-O companions. "I've got to go. Thea, make sure he doesn't over exert himself or push his limits."

"Are you talking about Ollie or Tommy?" she quipped.

I laughed. "Both. I'll talk to you later."

As I ran out of the cafeteria, I heard Tommy say, "I like her."

I didn't bother trying to hide my smile.

* * *

The surgery turned out to be a hernia repair that had ruptured on the way to the hospital, so a few complications made it last longer than the usual hour or so. But I didn't mind it. It felt so good to have my hands back in a body, to feel like I was doing something that I was born to do. After feeling so helpless and out of control for the past few weeks, I loved feeling in control and being in my element and knowing that I was saving a life.

When the surgery was over, I dragged myself to the nurses' station and ripped my scrub cap off my head. The last traces of adrenaline in my bloodstream were starting to fade away, and all that was left was writing the very tedious notes in the patient's chart.

"Roy?"

Before I could even ask, he pulled it out and handed it to me. I sent him a grateful smile and he shrugged it off, like the gruff nurse usually did.

As I scribbled in my notes from the surgery, I heard the telltale clacking of heels coming toward me. Looking up, I realized that Colonel Amanda Waller, the commander of the hospital, was headed right toward me. Subconsciously, I straightened to greet her.

"Colonel Waller," I nodded.

"Dr. Smoak," she replied in her usual, no-nonsense tone. "I just got off the phone with a Lieutenant Colonel Slade Wilson. Said he's the commanding officer for CSM Oliver Jonas. I believe you are the lead physician on his case?"

I nodded, feeling a deep sense of dread well up within me.

"I took the liberty of looking into his case, and in your notes it says he's recovering movement at a rapid pace. He's successfully doing laps around the hospital and will begin physical therapy soon."

I nodded again.

"How long do you think his PT will take?"

"Well the normal recovery period — "

"Dr. Smoak, after reading your notes you and I both know that Jonas is not a normal soldier. His range of movement after such a short period is remarkable considering the extent of his injuries when he first came here." She stared at me with such stern eyes that I subconsciously gulped. "How long do you think his PT will take?"

I sucked in a deep breath through my nostrils. "Four to six weeks," I finally answered.

She nodded. "Good. I will tell Wilson."

My jaw dropped. She couldn't be serious! She couldn't send him back there, just ten weeks after he was in an IED attack! That was insane!

She turned to start walking away, but I wasn't finished yet.

"Wait!" I cried. Her footsteps stopped and she turned around to stare at me with a questioning gaze. "Are you honestly thinking of sending him back out there? After he almost got his leg blown off?"

Her eyes narrowed. "You said it yourself, Doctor. He will be well enough to return to his post in four to six weeks and he _is_ the CSM of unit. He's needed in country."

"I didn't say he was well enough to return," I snapped. "I said his PT will take four to six weeks. If you rush him back into battle, you could risk all sorts of injuries, including mental ones! He really shouldn't go back to finish his deployment."

"That is not your call," she bit out sternly. "Your call is to make sure he's well enough in six weeks to return to Jalalabad. If you can't handle that, then maybe someone else should be on the case."

I bit down hard on my lip, glaring at her with all the hatred in my soul. I refused to let another doctor take over Oliver's case. But I also couldn't, in good faith, send him back to Afghanistan. Doing so would be going against my Hippocratic Oath, and there were few things in this world I took as seriously as that.

Colonel Waller must have seen all of it in my face, because she crossed her arms across her chest and fixed me with a steely gaze. "We are in the middle of a war, Dr. Smoak, and Jonas managed to save his squad from going down in that explosion. With men and women dropping like flies around us, our soldiers need the best people out there, leading and protecting. Jonas is one of the best, so he is needed, and his presence could mean the difference between life and death of another soldier.

"I suggest you think long and hard about that before deciding which side of that line you fall on."


	11. Chapter 11

I'd be lying if I didn't say the conversation with Colonel Waller didn't shake me. After I finished my notes, I ran to the helipad to gather my thoughts.

As much as I hated Waller and hated the calculating way she thought about this job and about all of the patients, I knew she had a point. Oliver was recovering at a steady clip and soon he would recover enough range of motion to return to duty.

What's more, he'd clearly proven how indispensable he was to his unit. His CO said as much, and hell, the fact that he saved four other guys from dying the day he got blown up was proof enough.

He was needed on the battlefield. I knew that, logically.

So then why was my heart screaming not to let him go back?

My thoughts were interrupted by the beep from my pager. I glanced down and saw a message from Roy that read, "CSM Dream Boat requests your presence."

Great, I sighed. Oliver was paging for me and I still didn't know what I could tell him.

With reluctant footsteps, I made my way down to the surgical floor, stopping outside Oliver's door. I knocked quietly, then waited until I heard a muffled, "Come in," before I entered.

Oliver was sitting upright in his bed while Tommy and Thea sat on either side of him, dozing in their chairs. Tommy leaned back with his sport coat draped over his front, his mouth slightly open emitting soft snores while Thea was leaning forward onto Oliver's bed, her head resting on her arms. The tableau brought a smile to my face.

"How are you doing?" I asked softly, hoping not to wake them.

"I'm good," he answered with a gentleness in his expression I'd never seen before. I credited that to the presence of his sister and his best friend. "They're still jetlagged, so I didn't mind so much when they fell asleep."

I chuckled as I stepped forward, carefully sidestepping Tommy's sleeping form to sit on the edge of the bed. "Did you guys have fun catching up?"

He nodded. "I missed them a lot. By the time the rest of my unit redeploys, I'll have enough leave built up that I can spend the holidays with my family in Starling City. I can do the rest of my PT there and contemplate my next move."

I bit down hard on my lip when he mentioned his unit redeploying, but the last part of his statement confused me. "Next move?" I repeated with a quirked eyebrow.

He looked at me carefully before nodding. "Yeah. My ETS is coming up in March, and I've decided not to re-enlist."

I blinked. Wow. This was big news. Huge news. And a huge deal, especially for a soldier like Oliver. He was one of those soldiers who loved the Army, who enjoyed serving with people who were like him, who learned so much and got so much out of his service. He was the kind of guy who would look back fondly on his time spent as a soldier and regale his grandchildren with tales of pranks pulled among his squad mates.

Still, it was good that he was getting out. It meant he wouldn't be in harm's way anymore, and he could spend time with his family and friends.

But before his time came, he'd have to go back, and the thought made my insides twist and ache.

There must have been some of that on my face because he tilted his head in an expression of concern. "Doc? Are you all right?"

I sucked in a deep breath. What was wrong with me? I thought angrily. I was a doctor. A professional doctor. These weird feelings rolling inside of me were far from professional. In fact, how I acted around him wasn't professional.

I needed to start being professional again. I needed to start detaching myself, going back to a relationship that was patient and doctor. I was far too involved with this case, and my reaction to sending him back to Afghanistan was proof of that.

I had to put my foot down. That meant no more bedside chats. No more letter writing. And no more DT.

"Well, I'm glad you mentioned redeployment," I said in a carefully detached voice as I stood from his bed and backed away a respectable distance. "We got a call from your CO asking about your progress, and I told him that your recovery was going so well that you might be able to complete your PT in four to six weeks. Meaning that you will likely return to your post by the start of October to finish out your deployment."

Oliver blinked at me in surprise.

"What?"

But it wasn't him who asked the question.

Instead it was an incredulous Thea Queen who had chosen an unfortunate moment to wake up. "What do you mean he's going back?" she demanded. "You said he wouldn't have to!"

My heart started pumping furiously in my chest. I was breaking my word, I knew that. If only she knew how badly I didn't want to do this.

But my professionality wouldn't let me say any of that. So my face remained blank as I finished explaining. "Major Wilson said that you're needed back in country."

"That's bullshit!" Thea shouted, and it was loud enough to bring Tommy out of his sleep. "He already saved his squad, it's time for someone else to step up! My brother shouldn't have to be the one to save everyone else's asses all the time!"

"Thea," Oliver murmured. He reached forward to squeeze his sister's hand. "Thea, it's OK."

"No it's not!" she screamed. "You're not going back there! You've already served your country, enough is enough!"

"I'm supposed to come back by late November anyway," he said soothingly. "If I go back, it'll only be for eight weeks. Eight weeks and then I'm back home."

"I don't care! You shouldn't have to go back! You _can't_ go back! She said you wouldn't have to!"

I agreed with every word that had come out of Thea's mouth, but I couldn't say any of that. I could already start to feel my professional mask slipping, so I hurried to tell him the rest before I broke. "I've already arranged for one of the best physical therapists here at Landstuhl. You'll meet with him tomorrow and begin your training."

I pulled several copies of our military PT brochure and handed one each to the Queen siblings as I began the prepared speech. "This will give you a better explanation of our facilities and the program we use to get our soldiers back in fighting form. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me or call the number on the bottom."

And that was it. That was the last straw for me. I could feel my doctor's mask falling apart, so before it crumbled completely, I walked out of his room and raced as far away as possible.

* * *

I wasn't hiding.

I was doing my post-op notes. On the floor. Of a supply closet. Far away from the surgical wing.

And I suppose that when you look at all of those things combined, it might look like hiding or whatever, but it wasn't. I was just looking for a quiet place where I could collect my thoughts and do my work in peace.

Which was exactly what I told Digg when he opened the door to the supply closet and stared at me with questioning eyebrows.

When I finished my explanation, he just sighed and plopped down next to me.

"You're rambling," he pointed out. "Which means you're also avoiding something. And considering you're doing post-op notes in a darkened supply closet on the other side of the building, I think it's time you fess up."

I sighed. Trust Digg to nail it in one.

"Oliver has to go back," I muttered quietly. Just saying the words out loud made my chest feel heavy and I leaned my head back until it hit the wall with a dull thud. "And I just...I don't want that to happen."

"Why?"

I closed my eyes. It was a simple question, but the answers were all so complicated. First of all, I didn't want to see all the hard work I'd done in keeping him alive and fairly intact undone by a suicide bomber out in the desert. Second of all, I hated that I had gone back on my word with Thea Queen, and she rightfully hated my guts at the moment.

But probably the biggest reason was that he was someone I'd come to really care about, as a friend. I sat by his bedside as he regaled me with tales of his mischief maker days, pranks pulled at the barracks, loving stories about his family and his housekeeper. And he sat with me on the helipad, watching the sunset as I slowly allowed myself to grieve for Cooper.

In ten short weeks, I suddenly realized Oliver Queen, the infamous billionaire playboy of Starling City, had become important to me. Incredibly important. And that scared the shit out of me.

I didn't know how to explain any of this to Digg, so I settled on the simplest explanation.

"I just don't."

It felt inadequate when the words left my mouth, but he didn't point it out.

"You know, Felicity," he began, "instead of telling me that you don't want him to go back to Afghanistan, maybe you should tell him."

"What good would that do?" I asked quietly. "I can't do anything about it. I have to facilitate his physical therapy. I have to take the notes. And eventually I'll have to sign his discharge papers. If I don't, Waller will."

He shrugged. "Maybe you're right. But it's been my experience as a human being that we generally feel comforted when we realize other human beings care for us."

Digg may have had a point, but that didn't mean I was actually brave enough to march into Oliver's room to tell him any of it. For crying out loud, I _just_ stopped shaking whenever I had to talk about Cooper in therapy. After five years of refusing to let myself feel anything (which I had just recently learned, thanks to Dr. Yamashiro), I couldn't just dive in like Digg expected me to.

So I ended up avoiding him for the first two weeks of his PT. After I introduced him to Maseo (Dr. Yamashiro's husband), his physical trainer, I steered clear of any situation that might have put me in close contact with him. Dr. Yamashiro eventually cleared me for all surgery and I dove into it with a vengeance, scheduling myself for back-to-back surgeries on most days and asking Roy to do all of my post-op rounds for me.

At first he did so without complaint, but by the second week he knew as well as Digg that I was avoiding a certain undercover CSM, and the surly nurse was not amused.

"What the hell is going on between you two?" he demanded when I finally emerged from behind the nurses' station once I was sure Oliver's room door was closed. "Did you two get into a lovers' quarrel or something?"

"No," I answered tiredly. "A lovers' quarrel would imply that we're lovers and we're not. God, that's such a creepy word."

He shook his head as he filled in the last few notes on the chart and shoved it with the rest. "Then you two need to figure it out because I'm tired of him asking me what's going on with you and I'm tired of doing your post-op exams."

My chest warmed against my will and blood rushed to my cheeks. "He asks after me?"

That just made Roy roll his eyes. "Seriously. The two of you need to get it together, and keep me the hell out of it."

* * *

"I have a problem."

They were the first words out of my mouth the minute my butt landed on Dr. Yamashiro's couch. The woman sitting across from me wore a surprised expression, and I couldn't really blame her because I was never the first one to talk, most especially about my problems.

"OK," she nodded, recovering from her surprise and adopting instead an encouraging smile. "And what is that problem?"

I sucked in a deep breath. "Before I tell you this problem, I need to know just how far doctor/patient confidentiality extends here. I mean, you're a DOD mental health specialist, so there are probably exceptions to the secrecy thing, even though I'm not a soldier, but I operate on them and — "

"Felicity," she interrupted, "doctor/patient confidentiality here is absolute. Anything you tell me in session stays here and only here."

I bit down hard on my lip, struggling a little over whether I really could tell her. But my chest was already bursting with all these secrets and all these feelings and if there was one thing I had learned in therapy, it meant that it was time to let them out.

"I have a patient who's a command sergeant major. His name on his enlistment papers is Oliver Jonas but he's actually Oliver Queen and he has to go back to war and I can't let him because I think I have feelings for him which is just wrong on so many levels but chief among them is that I wasn't supposed to have feelings for him but now I do and I don't know what to do."

She blinked in surprise out my outburst. I could see behind her calculating eyes that she was struggling to absorb everything I had just said and it was taking her a moment.

"All right," she said slowly. "Let's take this one at a time. Your patient is Oliver Queen of the Queen family in Starling City?"

I nodded.

"And he was injured and now he has to go back?"

"He got caught in an IED explosion and he saved half of his squad from certain death, but nearly ended up an amputee in the process. That was twelve weeks ago, but now that he can walk without any visible limping, they want him back in Afghanistan."

"And you don't want him to."

"No!" I exploded. "It's only been twelve weeks since his surgery! That's not enough time, and I don't care if he has superhuman recovery powers!"

"But there's another reason," she prodded.

My fists clenched painfully in my lap. There were so many reasons, and I didn't know where to start.

Dr. Yamashiro read that in my eyes because she answered for me. "You said you have feelings for him."

A breath escaped my nostrils and I closed my eyes. Her words were like the harsh light of truth and there was no running from it now just to keep my secrets cloaked in dark. "It started when he told me who he really was. He needed me to convey to his sister that he was still alive, and it just sort of...snowballed from there."

"When did you recognize you had feelings for him?"

Good question, I wondered to myself. But I didn't like the answer, because it showed just how much of an idiot I was.

"I think I recognized it when Colonel Waller told me I had to send him back," I said after a pause.

She nodded, like she expected as much. And maybe she did. She was my shrink, after all.

"So let's go back to something you said earlier that caught my attention. You said it was problematic on many different levels for you to have feelings for him. Why is that?"

Finally, an easy question.

"First of all, he's my patient. You know as well as I do that the lines between patient and doctor relations leave absolutely no wiggle room whatsoever. I could lose my job over this."

"OK," Dr. Yamashiro said slowly, "but he's not going to be your patient for much longer. Eventually he's going to go back to war and he will no longer be a surgical patient."

Lyla said the same thing, and granted both of them had perfectly legitimate points, but there were other reasons, and I dived into them immediately.

"Well the second reason is he's hiding his real identity from the Army. For crying out loud, he's the heir to the Queen Consolidated empire! He's known as the playboy of Starling City. He's got paparazzi on his tail all day, every day."

"That was five years ago," she pointed out. "He's joined the Army since then and seemingly dropped off the face of the planet."

"He's also still in love with his ex-girlfriend," I shot back. "Laurel Lance. He talks about her a lot when we're hanging out. She's the reason he joined the Army in the first place, so he could prove that he's a different guy."

"Dr. Smoak, that's a problem for _him_ , not you."

I bit down hard on my lip. One by one, she was stripping away my admittedly flimsy excuses, until I was left with nothing but the truth. I felt bare, exposed and vulnerable.

I felt terrified.

"I wasn't supposed to," I finally answered, looking down at the tangled fingers in my lap. "I wasn't supposed to have feelings for another man."

"What does that mean?"

Tears clouded my vision and I wiped them away, glaring at my bare ring finger. "I was supposed to be married. I wasn't supposed to be living in Germany alone. I was supposed to be with Cooper, with our own family. I wasn't supposed to be falling in love with another man. Cooper was supposed to be it, for the rest of my life."

I sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. "Having feelings for Oliver feels like a betrayal of Cooper's memory, because this was never supposed to happen."

I closed my eyes and it all flashed before me. What would have happened if Cooper had survived. What our wedding would have looked like, who would have been there. He would have gotten out of the Army and got a job as a contractor somewhere, possibly in California so my mother could be within a decent driving distance. We would have had beautiful, genius children, one of each gender. We could have lived in the city, but had a beach house during the summers where we'd take vacation and relax by the ocean. He would have taught our kids how to swim, and I would have taught them how to build their first computer. And while he taught them both how to defend themselves, I taught them how to stitch up their wounds with whatever they had on hand.

None of that was possible now. They were stillborn dreams, trapped in a tiny box with a tiny pearl engagement ring.

Dr. Yamashiro reached over and put a gentle hand on my knee. "Dr. Smoak," she murmured with an encouraging smile. "I've dealt with a lot of soldiers who suffer from survivor's guilt, and when they finally start feeling happy, finally find something that helps them move on, they stop and run away. You know why?"

I shook my head.

"They're afraid. And that's what you're feeling now. Fear. You had these plans for your shared life with Cooper and they went away when he died. And now you're terrified of anything that strays even a centimeter from what you expect, because the unknown is scary."

She reached over and turned my chin so I was looking her in her compassionate eyes. "But here's a secret, Dr. Smoak. Never, ever make a decision out of fear. Because the minute you let fear rule your life, you've stopped living altogether."


	12. Chapter 12

It had been a week since my revelatory session with Dr. Yamashiro, but I still couldn't bring myself to talk to Oliver. I knew I had to, and I knew I had to do it soon because Maseo told me he only had two weeks of PT left before he went back. In fact, that morning I found his papers at the front of his chart.

But Dr. Yamashiro was right. I was afraid. Terrified. Straight up shaking at the thought of telling Oliver how I felt. And I knew my fear was selfish, but it was still an impressive wall to climb over.

My last surgery for the morning had ended and I was trudging toward the helipad, looking for a few moments by myself before I had to go back. But someone was already there when I opened the door.

The figure was sitting right in front of the landing pad, curled up in an oversized coat. When the person heard my approach, a head glanced over a pair of tiny shoulders and I realized it was none other than Thea Queen.

I blinked in surprise and she stared back at me with piercing hazel eyes. "Hi," I said awkwardly. "I didn't know you'd be here."

She didn't say anything as I approached and took a seat on the ground beside her. "You're not technically supposed to be here, you know."

She scoffed. "What are you going to do? Kick me off? Or better yet, you could send me off to war. That seems to be your MO."

I winced at the barb. I'd only known Thea for a short amount of time, but it was enough to realize that she was sharp and liberal with her insults.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I don't want him to go."

"Like hell," she spat. "My brother's just another nameless, faceless soldier that you had to patch up and ship out, regardless if he has a family and friends who stay up at night terrified that he might not make it back. You don't care. Admit it."

"I do care," I insisted. "Believe me, I do."

She made a dismissive noise in her throat like she didn't believe me, and I desperately tried to wrack my brain for something I could say that would prove I meant it.

"Three years ago," I began, "there was this soldier that we got life-flighted in. His injuries were a lot like your brother's because he and his squad were caught in a suicide bomber's attack. He tried to make sure his fellow soldiers got to safety before he did. But by the time someone realized the extent of his injuries, it was too late.

"There wasn't much we could do for him when he got here. He'd already suffered too much damage, and the minute we got him under anesthesia, he flatlined."

I wasn't looking at her at this point. I was looking straight ahead, my mind's eye flooded with the memory of that case.

"His family arrived at Landstuhl the next day, and they had to say goodbye. He had a wife and three kids, all boys and all younger than seven years old. His widow couldn't breathe, from her grief, that's how hard she was crying. The oldest son was trying to comfort his mother and the middle son was just staring at his dad in the bed, like he was waiting for him to wake up at any minute. But the youngest son — he couldn't have been older than four — he didn't understand."

The image was still clear as day. He turned around and walked up to me, and tugged on my pants. I crouched down, trying to hold my tears back, smiling for his sake.

"He asked, 'Is my daddy dead?' And I couldn't do anything but nod. Then he asked why, and how can you explain it? You can't tell a four-year-old that his dad's a hero. You can't explain to a four-year-old that his dad threw himself into harm's way to save a bunch of other men to make sure they went home to their own four-year-olds. You can't tell a little boy that his dad is dead while some other dad gets to live. It's not fair to them. It's not fair, period."

I felt Thea's eyes turn toward me, but I didn't look back at her. I pulled my knees up to my chest and rested my folded arms over them, with my chin on my forearms. "I didn't know what to say. I just told him that his dad died because he was brave and wanted to help other people.

"But ever since then, I just can't help but think how unfair it all is. Some soldiers come home, some don't, all because of some random set of circumstances. And I'm the one who's supposed to tip the circumstances to make sure everyone survives and damn it, I try my hardest."

Tears sprang to my eyes, but I didn't bother swallowing them down. It was something Dr. Yamashiro had taught me — that there was nothing wrong with allowing yourself to feel emotions. Avoiding them and bottling them up was what made the nightmares constantly return.

We were quiet for a long period. It didn't break until Thea scooted closer to me and took my hand in hers.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't know."

I smiled sadly at her and squeezed her hand. "It's OK."

Silence descended again, and she leaned her head down on my shoulder, while I rested my cheek on the top of her head. I couldn't help but think how this was the exact same position I was in when I told Oliver about Cooper.

"I hope he makes it back," she murmured.

"I do, too."

She pulled away from me to look me in the eyes with the most intense stare I'd ever experienced from a high school senior. "Then you should tell him that," she said seriously. "For the past few weeks you've been avoiding him and he won't say it, but it's got him down and distracted. He misses you. He misses talking to you."

I looked down to avoid her X-ray stare. "I don't know how to still be his friend and not be scared, Thea," I answered finally.

"We're all scared," she insisted. "We're in the middle of a war that we're sending our brothers and sisters to go fight. And you're the one who has to patch them up and send them back off. It's only natural for us to be scared."

She was right, and oddly enough, her words were comforting. So when she got up and reached her arm out to me, I took it and together, we left the helipad to find Oliver.

We searched the whole hospital looking for him. He wasn't in his room, the cafeteria or wandering around the halls. But we finally stumbled upon him in the physical therapy gym, pacing on the treadmill with his steel blue gaze focused directly in front of him.

"Ollie," Thea called. She left my side and ran toward him while I stayed, hovering by the doorway. Despite her inspiring words, I still wasn't willing to let go of my fear quite yet.

He turned at the sound of his sister's voice and slowed the pace of the conveyor belt. "What are you doing here?" he asked. "I thought you and Tommy were going sightseeing."

"Tommy got a bit too drunk last night, so he's spending the day at our hotel room recovering," she answered with an eye roll. "Instead I had a productive conversation with your doctor."

Oliver looked up and he saw me standing at the doorway. His eyes suddenly turned to steel and his lips tightened, making my stomach roll over.

"Hi, Oliver."

"Dr. Smoak."

I bit down on my lip. He hadn't called me Dr. Smoak since the day I met him. Ever since then he either called me Doc or Felicity, depending on if I was crying or not. The fact he was addressing me so formally made me realize how pissed he was.

"OK…" Thea trailed off uncertainly. "Well I'm going to let the two of you talk while I try to rouse Tommy from the dead. Talk to you later."

With that, she walked out of the gym but not without reassuringly squeezing my arm before she went.

When she was gone, I looked back at Oliver who was still staring at me with wary eyes. I sucked in a deep breath and approached him slowly.

"I talked to Maseo," I began, hoping that if I started this conversation on a light note he might ease into it with me. "He said your PT has been going really well."

He didn't answer me. Instead he pulled his sweaty cotton shirt off over his head, leaving me instead to stare in speechless wonder at his glorious upper body. Seriously, his chiseled muscles were something straight out of a goddamn romance novel, and all the scars did nothing to lessen their impact.

Damn it, Smoak, I muttered angrily to myself when I could finally tear my eyes away from the sight. You operated on him for crying out loud. Of course you know what he looks like without a shirt. Coincidentally I also knew what his package looked like because I had to operate on his leg and _frack_ was that the wrong thing to be thinking at the moment.

He turned with a raised eyebrow. "As much as I appreciate the compliment to my... _package_... I really doubt you came here just for that, Dr. Smoak. Or to talk about how my PT is going."

I felt like someone lit my face on fire with how hot I suddenly felt. "I didn't mean to say that out loud," I muttered, forcing my eyes too look anywhere but Oliver. When I looked up again, he had a towel hanging around his neck and an expectant glare on his face.

"I just...I just wanted to say…" God, I didn't even know what I wanted to say. What _was_ there to say? I couldn't even figure out how to wrap words around what I was feeling.

So finally I just settled on the truth.

"I didn't want to send you back," I murmured. "It was the last thing I wanted to do. I promise, I tried to fight against it. I tried."

He snorted. "Could have fooled me."

My brows furrowed in confusion. "What?"

"You didn't seem all that concerned that I had to go back when you stopped talking to me altogether," he shot. "You handed me off to a surly nurse and an unforgiving trainer because you couldn't be bothered to check up on me yourself. I guess it's just because you doctors think you're so much smarter than the cannon fodder you have to stitch up every day."

Anger flared up within me. I could understand why Thea was pissed at me, but Oliver had no excuse to doubt me. Not when I spent hours with him every single day, tracking his progress, writing his letters and listening to his stories. He should have known me better than that.

"I am concerned," I retorted. "I _don't_ want you to go back!"

"You have a really funny way of showing it!"

I huffed. "I _do_ care, and if you can't get that through your thick skull then maybe I shouldn't be so concerned after all. Your head is hard enough to handle a whole bunch of explosions, it seems."

All of a sudden, the distance between us disappeared. He was standing just two feet away from me, glaring with such disdain in his ice blue eyes that I wanted to run away and cower. But there was a larger, stronger part of me that stood rooted to the floor and glared right back at him.

"If you care so much, then why did you disappear the last few weeks? You avoid me every time you pass my room, you don't say hi to me when I wave. I had Roy page you _four_ times one day and you didn't return any of them! What the hell am I supposed to think about that?"

He kept shooting all these accusations at me, fast as lightning. He was like a master, pushing every single button I had until finally I snapped.

"I couldn't handle it, OK?" I finally shouted. "I can't handle the thought of you going back! I didn't want to think about you going back into a war zone, and I was scared and out of my mind with worry and I didn't know how to look you in the eye and keep my own calm, not after I said you wouldn't have to go back! So I avoided you and I'm _sorry_ , but you have to understand that I mean it when I say that I care!"

This didn't seem to mean much to him, because he grimaced at me. "Did it ever occur to you that I might be scared too? You're afraid? I'm _terrified_. I've already been caught in an IED, I've been put through the wringer and I have to go back there, and the _one_ person I thought I could count on in this stupid hospital just disappeared! Stopped talking to me altogether! I _needed_ you and you weren't there!"

My hands clenched, but I realized he was right. He'd been fighting for so long to be fine for everyone else around him, but I was too wrapped up in my own...whatever to see that he was scared too, and that he needed me more than ever.

Without thinking, I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him closer to me. The tears sprang up in my eyes, but I didn't do anything to push them away. This crummy feeling was my penance for abandoning him when he needed me most.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, holding him tight. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to abandon you."

He stiffened under my touch, but seconds later, the tension melted away and he was hugging me back, his arms pressing me to his torso, his head buried in my shoulder. I felt something wet seep into my scrub top, and an escaped sniff told me he was crying.

"I'm so scared," he whispered and I held him tighter. "I don't want to go back."

He sank down to the floor, his knees seemingly unable to support him, and I followed, my arms still around him. He held me tighter to me, the minute we hit the ground, clinging to me like I was a life raft and he was drifting out to see in the storms of his own fear.

"I know you don't," I murmured. "I know."

* * *

The pros of making up with Oliver meant I didn't have to avoid him anymore and Roy didn't have to act as the middleman, something he was supremely grateful for.

The cons of making up with Oliver meant that in one week I had to sign his papers and ship him back off to war.

I tried really hard not to think about that too often.

Tommy and Thea had decided to to stay in Germany until the end of his physical therapy and he was shipped off once again to the red zone, so they were usually with him whenever I stopped by to do my exams and monitor his PT. This, unfortunately, meant that they took up with Oliver's cause to get my dating game up to speed.

Tommy had been particularly scandalized when he heard I hadn't been on a first date in seven years.

"Look, I will be the first to say how stupid my sex is," he said, disbelief written all over his face when I told him, "but you mean to tell me that _not one single man_ has asked you on a date in seven years?"

I shook my head, swallowing my lime Jell-O. "That's not true," I protested. "Guys have asked, but I've declined."

It was Thea's turn to look at me in horror. "Why?" she demanded.

I shrugged, spooning another mouthful of Jell-O. "Different reasons," I answered cryptically. Oliver was the only one in the room who knew why, and he reached forward from his bed to grip my shoulder. I smiled back at his reassurance.

"Well this calls for drastic measures," Tommy announced. "What has Oliver covered with you so far?"

That was a tough question to answer. DT started off structured and regimented, but as the weeks had passed it soon turned into informal conversations where I learned more about Oliver and vice versa. Sometimes he'd intersperse our moments with some dating advice, but for the most part I didn't really learn much about dating during DT.

"I know to keep conversation topics light on a first date," I answered, trying to gather up all the information I'd absorbed. "And I know that if I'm nervous to count to three in my head before I start babbling because that has happened."

"No," Thea drawled out sarcastically. I stuck my tongue out at her in response.

"And you've mostly been practicing with Oliver?"

I nodded.

"Well no offense or anything, but he's a little rusty himself since he hasn't been on a first date since he joined the Army."

"Hey!" Oliver protested. "I still know the mechanics."

Tommy waved this away like it meant nothing. "I, on the other hand, have kept in constant practice and am known as a level four date master. So if anyone should be training you, it's me."

Thea snickered and Oliver rolled his eyes. Tommy ignored them both.

"So clearly Ollie's taught you the basics. Now it's time to up your game. How's your flirting?"

I quirked my eyebrows. "If you count incoherent babbling as flirting, then it's at a ten."

"All right," he sighed. Then he tapped his chin like he was in deep thought, stumped already by my complete lack of flirting ability. "Well when I was first starting out in the ways of seduction — " I rolled my eyes at this, " — I pretended I was someone else. A role model in flirting. I usually picked Jude Law."

Thea and Oliver both burst out laughing. "Jude Law?" the younger Queen giggled. "Are you serious?"

"Hey, he is a _master_ at charm and seduction," Tommy insisted. "Just watch any movie he's been in. Even _Sherlock Holmes_."

Without waiting for a response, Tommy turned to me with an expectant look on his face. "OK, so think of someone who's really good at flirting. Someone you've always admired."

I sighed. I didn't typically consume the kind of media that was awash in female characters well versed in the art of flirting, so I was at a loss. After a long while of picking my brain, I finally settled on one.

"My mom," I announced.

That caused a few raised eyebrows.

"Your mom?" Oliver asked.

I shrugged. "She was a cocktail waitress in Vegas for most of my childhood, and the more she flirted, the more she got tipped. I used to do my homework in the breakroom during late shifts, but sometimes I'd watch her out on the floor and she was a master at working a room full of men."

"That's awesome," Thea intoned, her eyes wide with admiration. "The only thing our mom ever taught me about flirting or men in general was to wear underwear with my pantyhose otherwise I'd get a yeast infection."

"God, Thea!" Oliver shouted, shoving at her shoulder lightly. Tommy made an equal noise of disgust. "We didn't need to know that!"

She caught my eye and we shared a sardonic smile and a shake of the head. Men.

When Tommy had finally gotten over his horror at Thea's revelation, he turned his attention back to me. "OK, so your mom is you role model. Ollie is going to pretend to be a bored date and it's up to you to use your flirting skills to draw him out of his shell and get him interested. I will interject with helpful tips when the occasion calls for it."

I shot a sideways glance at the man himself, who simply shrugged at the assignment.

"Fine," I sighed.

I set aside my empty Jell-O bowl and turned to face him on his bed. Then I took a deep breath before plastering a smile to my face. "Hi. I'm Felicity Smoak."

My companion grunted in response. "Oliver Queen."

I raised my eyebrows at him and he broke character for a brief second and winked at me. I don't know why, but it made me want to giggle and run far away at the same time.

Clearing my throat, I got back to the task at hand. I tried to think back on everything I'd ever seen my mom pull on a reluctant customer. She'd adjust her hair, lean in (but not too far forward that it was obvious), then try and make him feel like he was the only man in the world.

"So, Mr. Queen," I said in a bright, but soft tone, "tell me about yourself. What do you do?"

He shrugged, avoiding my gaze. "I'm a soldier."

"Oh? I've always liked a man in uniform."

"Stop," Tommy called out. "No cliches. Not unless you're making fun of them or you're twisting them to make it not a cliche."

"Yeah, come on, Felicity," Thea teased. "You're better than liking a man in uniform."

I stuck my tongue out at her before turning back to Oliver. "Wow, a soldier," I tried again. "What's your MOS?"

That earned a raised eyebrow, which I took as a good sign. "Eleven Charlie," he answered.

I smiled. "Infantry, huh? So I guess that means you know how to work a rocket launcher." I winked because for once I actually made an innuendo on purpose.

This elicited a laugh from everyone in the room, even from the gruff character Oliver was playing. "I guess you could say that," he allowed with a small smile.

I giggled a little, bringing the back of my hand to my mouth, something I saw my mom do all the time. "But in all honesty, I really admire the infantrymen. They're always men of action." I tilted my head to the side in an innocent gesture. "Would you say you're a man of action, Oliver?"

It was very subtle, but I could see it. There was a flash of something in his blue eyes and his Adam's apple bobbed ever so slightly in his throat. Hmm, I thought to myself, the corners of my lips crawling upward. That's interesting.

"Depends if action is needed," he replied, his thick eyebrows settling over his eyes in a dark expression.

I quirked an eyebrow and smirked at him, a move I saw my mom do countless times before she leaned in and pounced. "Oh really?" I murmured. "Well I find that I tend to need a lot of action." And I winked again for good measure.

"I might be able to take care of that," he breathed, his eyes never leaving mine.

Blood rushed up to my face in surprise at his comment. That comment felt surprisingly off script and the look in his eyes seemed to drive home his point. All of a sudden, I found it really hard to draw breath into my lungs.

The expression on Oliver's face soon became too much and I had to wrench my gaze away, turning to our rapt audience. "How was that?" I asked, proud of how my voice didn't waver despite the pounding of my heartbeat.

Tommy and Thea were both staring back at us, their eyes wide and their mouths gaping open. "Holy crap, Doc," Thea murmured in awe. "Is your mom taking students or anything? Because I'd love for her to take me on."

I chuckled as I got off the bed, ignoring how my knees felt like the Jell-O I ate just moments ago. "I'll give her your number," I promised as I started to edge away.

This was all of a sudden getting too real. The pounding in my chest and the way my blood pulsed through my body was making it difficult to hold on to any amount of rationality. It was also getting impossible to keep my eyes away from Oliver's, especially since I could feel the gravitational pull of his ice blue eyes drilling into my skin.

Luckily, I was saved by the proverbial bell.

"Felicity." Digg poked his head in the room when he saw me. "We've got incoming trauma. All hands on deck."

The only words that could have jump started my foggy brain. I could still feel Oliver's eyes on me, but there were more important things to worry about at the moment. In an instant I was following after Digg, navigating our way through the halls up to the helipad.

"What do we know?" I asked.

"Three men in an RPG attack," he answered. "Couldn't get much more than that."

When we got to the helipad, the helicopter was hovering right over the landing site, and the team of nurses already there rushed through the gusts of the rotating blades to meet the unloading gurneys.

I grabbed onto the closest gurney while the medics gave us the rundown. Three men in an RPG attack, one with a fatal gunshot wound to the shoulder, barely missing the carotid artery. One had a major head trauma, and the last had gotten stuck underneath an overturned Humvee, likely going to need a leg amputation.

"All right," Digg announced as we ran into the hospital with our respective gurneys. "I'll take the head trauma. Caitlin, you'll take the amputation. Felicity, you'll take the gunshot wound."

My fingers clenched over the rails of the gurney, but I tightened my jaw and nodded. It was the first major surgery I'd taken on since Myron, but it wasn't one I was going to fuck up. Not this time.

The minute I got the OR, I rushed to the scrub room to get started. Every surgeon will tell you that they each have their own scrubbing rituals, whether it's meditation, chanting, some weird kind of dance...whatever.

But this time, Dr. Yamashiro wanted me to try something different. She wanted me to take in my regular deep breaths, but then she wanted me to take that corner of my mind and heart that always belonged to Cooper, roll it up, put it in a bottle and send it out to sea.

"You bring him with you wherever you go," she told me in our latest session. "Especially when you're in surgery. It's time to start letting him go, and the first place to do that is when you're working."

Not every soldier was going to be like Cooper, she reminded me. Some would live. Some would die. And yeah, it was my job to tip the scales toward the living side as much as possible, but I couldn't save everyone. And no matter how many soldiers I did save, it wasn't going to bring Cooper back.

"Every time you lose a patient, it feels like you failed him," Dr. Yamashiro said. "So let him go before you go into the operating room. Your surgeries aren't about him. They're about the patient you are tasked to save."

And she was right. With Cooper's memory breathing down my neck, it made it impossible for me to reconcile any failures I experienced as a doctor. So it was time I started letting him go.

With my hands still under the scalding hot water, I closed my eyes and imagined Cooper. Imagined the last time I saw him, kissing him before he got on the plane and flew off to Iraq. Imagined Myron following the casket. Imagined the box and the ring.

I took all those memories, rolled them up and put them in the bottle, sending them out to sea. Then, with a final breath, I opened my eyes and looked out into the OR, where the scrub nurses were draping the body and laying out all the tools.

He was ready, I thought to myself.

And so was I.

* * *

"Heading out for the day?" Roy asked.

"Yeah," I answered.

I was still jotting down some notes in the chart of the patient I'd finished operating on. Luckily he made it through without a hitch and his CO was thrilled to hear it. For the first time, holding a scalpel in my hand didn't feel like I was trying to save Cooper and the soldier made it through anyway.

It was a good day, and the bottle of wine that awaited me in my apartment would be a well-deserved celebration.

"Before you go, CSM Dream Boat wanted you to check in."

I looked up so fast that my ponytail whipped me in the face. Oh frack, I thought to myself with panic. I had completely forgotten about Oliver. I had been so caught up in the moment of a major trauma surgery that all memories of his penetrating blue eyes fell away only to come rushing back with a vengeance the minute Roy mentioned him.

"You OK, Blondie?" Roy asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Uh…" I looked down at the chart, quickly scribbling the last of my observations before shoving it at him. "I'm fine. I'm fine."

His questioning stare turned into a scowl. "Oh don't tell me you and him are in a fight again. I'm _not_ going to be your fucking messenger."

"We're not," I hissed, hinting at him to keep his voice down. "We're not in a fight."

"Then what's with your face? You look like you're ready to bolt any second."

I bit down on my lip, debating just how much I should tell him. "It's just...things got...things got _weird_ today. And I don't know how to handle it."

His eyebrows made a weird curve as he surveyed me. "Did he finally tell you he's in love with you?"

My eyes widened. "What? No! What in the world would make you think that? He's not in love with me!"

He rolled his eyes. "You know, Blondie, for a doctor you're pretty stupid."

I sputtered in protest, but he barrelled on without heeding what I was saying. "It's clear to pretty much anyone with eyes that the two of you are in love with one another. When the two of you were going through that fight of yours he wouldn't stop asking about you and every time you even so much as walk by his room, he looks up hoping that you'll walk in and talk to him. And maybe you don't see it because you're in it, but the way he looks at you…" Roy shook his head. "Look, I'm a dude, and I know that look. It's the look of a man in love."

My cheeks reddened. "You're wrong, Roy," I muttered. "He's still in love with his ex-girlfriend from back home."

He just shrugged and turned back to his computer, like he was already bored of our conversation. "Whatever you say."

I glared at him, even though he was looking away. I was hoping that I might have developed some sort of laser vision that would have allowed me to drill holes into his head, but no such luck to be had.

With Roy ending our conversation, I reluctantly pulled away from the nurses' station and walked across the hall to Oliver's room. Instead of laying in his bed like I was so accustomed to seeing, he was sitting in a chair next to his window, gazing thoughtfully. When he heard the door open, he turned his head and smiled at me.

"Hey," he greeted softly.

Damn his smile, I thought to myself. Even when I was nervous as hell, it had the ability to melt away my anxieties enough that I almost forgot why I didn't want to see him in the first place.

Almost.

"Where's Tommy and Thea?" I asked, still hovering near the doorjamb. I half expected them to come leaping out of Oliver's bathroom at any moment.

"Back at the hotel," he answered. There was something wistful and sad in his eyes and it made me take a step forward. "Since tomorrow's my last day before I head back out, they wanted to do some planning for a going away bash or something."

Having spent the better part of a week with the three of them, I understood that parties and blowouts were a specialty for them. I chuckled as I sat at the foot of his bed. "I don't know how much trouble you guys will be able to get into in a hospital."

"They'll find a way," he grinned. "They're really good at that."

I nodded and conversation fell away for a brief moment. Then he finally broke the silence.

"Doc, I need you to do me a favor."

I turned to face him, but he was biting down on his lips, like he wasn't really sure what he wanted to say. So I just tilted my head to the side and waited as he got up the words to ask me what favor he needed.

"Would you please watch after Thea while I'm gone?" he finally whispered. "And Tommy, to a lesser extent, but mostly Thea. I mean they'll both go home after I've been shipped off, but just like call her and check in every so often. I've seen the way she acts around you. You're like another older sibling to her and she really admires you. She needs someone like that while I'm away."

His dedication to Thea was so inspiring, it brought tears to my eyes. Even on the eve of his departure, he was worrying about his sister. It was a wonder I didn't fall for him sooner.

Without thinking, I reached over and squeezed his hand. "I promise I'll look after her." My eyes bore deep into his, hoping that my sincerity would resonate with him.

He squeezed my hand back. "Thank you," he whispered.

I took in a deep breath through my nostrils and pulled my hand away, preparing for what I was going to say next. "Now it's your turn to do me a favor."

"Anything."

"Promise you'll take care of yourself over there," I told him seriously. "I spent ten hours putting you back together the last time you got yourself blown up, and I really, really don't want to do that again. Do you understand?"

He chuckled. "I promise," he answered, drawing an X over his heart.

"Good. After all, you have to come back to Thea and Tommy. And Laurel."

I added her name almost like an afterthought, but it tumbled awkwardly off my tongue. And Oliver noticed because his intense gaze returned, like he was trying to read my mind.

"Right," he murmured. "Laurel."

"Exactly." I shifted uncomfortably in my spot, trying to come off as cool and collected.

In reality, the thought of Oliver with someone else filled me with a crushing, aching kind of despair. But it didn't even come close to the kind of despair I felt at the thought of him not coming home at all.

"You have a lot of unfinished business back in the States, mister," I told him, trying my damnedest to give him a smile that he might buy. "You've got your family and Tommy and you've got to win Laurel back and show her that you're a changed man."

He was staring at me with this unreadable expression. I brought my arms around my middle, like I was trying to protect myself from his gaze.

"And you are a changed man," I told him. My self-preservational babbling instincts kicked in. "I mean, I didn't know you before or anything, but from what you've told me and what Thea and Tommy have told me — "

"Wait, what have Thea and Tommy told you?"

But it was too late to stop the train. It was already off the tracks, going downhill fast.

" — you're definitely a different person than you were when you joined the Army five years ago. You're an American hero. You're kind and courageous and so incredibly brave and selfless. And you're a beautiful person, inside and out." My cheeks burned bright red at those words, but I barrelled on like I hadn't said them. "Oliver, I want you to know before you head back out that you are one of the best people I've ever had the privilege of meeting, and you've made me a better person just knowing you. And you inspire that in other people."

Tears burned in the back of my eyes, but I forced a smile on my face. "So that means you've got to come back, OK? I know you fight to honor the dead, but promise me that when you're over there, you'll fight to live."

His face was filled with such emotion that I felt it swell in my own chest. I could hardly breathe when he looked at me like that, but it was getting hard to care about such silly things as oxygen.

"I promise," he answered in a raspy voice. "I promise I'll come back."

I nodded, unable to hold the tears back anymore. Then, before I could consider the wisdom of the decision, I surged forward and wrapped my arms around his neck.

"Good," I whispered, the tears trailing down my face. "Good."


	13. Chapter 13

It was Oliver's last day. He was shipping out that evening, right at 11 p.m.

I was trying desperately not to think about it.

Luckily the hospital was helping with that. Tommy and Thea both informed me that under no circumstances was I allowed to skip out on Oliver's going away festivities, but they didn't start until six p.m. That gave me a whole twelve hours to bury myself in work, checking up on patients, stitching up emergencies and removing infected body parts.

I was scrubbing out of a surgery I'd just finished with Digg when he brought up what I'd been trying to ignore all morning.

"So Jonas is going back tonight."

I kept my eyes trained on my hands, running the rough bar of soap all over my fingers and rinsing off the suds in the stream of scalding water. "Yeah," I answered. "He is."

I didn't have to look at him to tell he was staring at me with sympathetic eyes. "And how are you doing?"

I shrugged, an expression that hid the depth of the ache in my chest. "I knew this day would come eventually. And besides, it's a good thing he's getting out of this hospital. It means he's well enough to go out and continue living his life."

Digg tilted his head to the side as he watched me. "And what are you going to do?"

His question forced me to look up at him. "What do you mean?"

"What are you going to do? Are you going to request a transfer to a different military hospital? Are you going to go back to the States? Are you going to go back to Vegas or Benning or Starling City?"

These were questions I hadn't thought about at all until Digg brought them up, but the minute he did they made sense. We both knew how much I hated it in Germany, and the thought of staying her became more and more absurd.

The truth was, I didn't know what I was going to do next. It was finally time for me to move on from this hellish island, but now instead of being scared of that thought like I might have been just a few months ago, I was hopeful. There were a million different doors open to me. I could continue living my life without feeling guilty, without feeling like I was disrespecting the dead.

I could do anything I wanted, and it was such a freeing feeling.

"I'm not sure yet," I answered him with a genuine smile. "But I'm not too worried about it."

Digg returned my grin and patted me gently on the shoulder. "Neither am I."

When we were both finished cleaning up after ourselves, we returned to the nurse's station. But the minute I flipped open the chart to jot down my notes, a pair of hands wrapped around my elbow and yanked me away from the counter.

I whipped my head around to find the source of my abduction, and of course it was Thea Queen with an impish smile on her face.

"Come on, you have to get ready," she announced as she forcefully dragged me down the hallway toward the women's restroom.

"Get ready for what?" I demanded.

"Ollie's going away party, dummy." She rolled her eyes like this was the most obvious answer in the world.

"Thea, that's not for another two hours!"

"Exactly! It's going to take me at least an hour and a half to do your hair and makeup. I really should have started way before this, but that hot nurse said you were still in surgery."

Well now I was sufficiently horrified. "What the hell makes you think I'm going to let you do my hair and makeup?"

She stopped right in front of the restroom and fixed me with an ice cold glare. "Because my brother is an American hero, and this is his going away party and he _deserves_ a hero's celebration. Also, I'm his sister and I'm going to give him the celebration he deserves because he's a hero and because I am a relative disguising my grief. Is that reason enough for you?"

Before I could answer her, she shoved me through the swinging bathroom door where she'd already set up a chair and a ton of different products on the counter.

"This is completely unnecessary," I grumbled as she pushed me down onto the chair.

"Not at all," she chirped, her former icy demeanor completely gone as quickly as it came. "It's Ollie's last night among civilization and for once you should look like you're civilized."

"Ha. Ha."

"Seriously, Felicity, when was the last time you let yourself be pampered?"

I shrugged. "I don't remember."

"Exactly. Consider this my thank you gift to you for taking care of my brother while I couldn't." She gently slid my glasses off my face and the elastic off my ponytail. Then she grabbed the nearest brush and started running it through my tangled mane.

I chewed on my lip at Thea's unexpected words. Being the kind of doctor that sewed up soldiers for a living, I didn't get a lot of thanks. When I did, I didn't know how to react to it. Par for the course, I didn't really know how to react to this either.

"What about you?" I asked as she raked the brush through my hair. "When are you getting ready?"

Thea scoffed. "I could roll out of bed on two hours of sleep and still be ready. I'm like Beyonce, I woke up like this."

I pursed my lips at the implication that it would take me an hour and a half to look civilized while Thea could just roll out of bed and look like a supermodel...but she was right.

"So what exactly is this shindig going to entail? You and Tommy have been so quiet about all the preparations."

"That's because it's a surprise," she answered. She started twisting my hair into weird structures, so I stopped trying to pay attention to what she was doing.

"I thought this was supposed to be a surprise for _him_ , not me."

"It's a surprise for everyone. It's more fun that way."

I would have shaken my head if Thea didn't have such a tight hold on all my hair.

"So what are you going to do after Oliver leaves?" I asked. "Are you and Tommy headed straight back for Starling or are you going to stay here for a little while?"

I caught her grimace in the mirror and chuckled. "We have to go back," she sighed. "I've already missed like a month of school and my mom said that under no circumstances was I allowed to miss anymore."

"Lame."

"I know, right?"

"Well if you need someone to hack your school's system and change a few grades, you know how to contact me," I winked.

She giggled. "I'll keep that in mind."

It ended up taking Thea only an hour to do my hair and makeup. I was about to crow over the fact that she was clearly a liar, but then she returned to the bathroom with a garment back and told me to go in the stall immediately and change. When I unzipped the bag, my jaw dropped in surprise.

The dress was gorgeous. It was a stunning shade of red satin with a sweetheart neckline and thin straps that would hang just over the crests of my shoulders. The skirt was an A-line, flounce-y affair that stopped at the middle of my calves. And the whole ensemble was finished off with a bow around the waist, tied off on the left hip.

"Thea, where the hell did you find this?" I demanded.

"There are a lot of surprisingly decent vintage stores in Germany. Can you imagine? The minute I saw that I thought it definitely belonged on your body."

Well she was right. The minute I stepped into the dress, the soft red satin came to hug my body like second skin. The zipper went up with no resistance and when I emerged from the stall I looked like I'd stepped back in time.

I grinned at her. "If you rich people go all out for a hospital party, I can't even imagine what your swankier soirees look like."

She winked. "Trust me. I have a feeling you're going to find out what our stateside parties look like pretty soon."

* * *

The Landstuhl cafeteria wasn't what I would call a party destination, what with the small quarters, the poor lighting and the ever-present sour smell of disinfectant and mystery meat. But the minute I crossed the threshold that evening, the cafeteria didn't even resemble anything that belonged in a hospital.

For once, the poor lighting wasn't a hindrance. Thea and Tommy had draped Christmas lights across the ceiling, starting from every corner and every wall until they met at the middle to create a glittering chandelier.

The walls were lined with old war posters that said stuff like "Buy war bonds!" and "Loose lips sink ships!" On the wall farthest from the entrance, a huge USO sign hung above two tables covered with a white linen tablecloth. And every single square inch of the table was covered with different foods: stuffed mushroom caps, meatballs, a cheese and cracker platter and more.

In the corner, Tommy was manning a makeshift bar, complete with full bottles of top-shelf liquors and several bottles of champagne. A few feet away from him was the sound system: an old-school record player hooked up to what looked like some pretty expensive speakers, filling the room with the blaring sounds of jazzy horns.

"So?" Thea beamed. "What do you think?"

I was pretty speechless. I mean, I knew Tommy and Thea were good, but they managed to turn a tiny hospital cafeteria into a freaking event hall that the Queen of England would have deigned to attend.

So I settled on the only words I could muster.

"This is incredible," I breathed, taking in the whole scene.

"Thank you, you're looking quite lovely yourself." Tommy magically appeared by my side and took my hand to press a kiss against my knuckles.

I laughed at his antics, but also took a moment to admire his appearance. He was dressed in a brown, double-breasted suit with a blue tie and slicked back hair. It seemed Thea wasn't the only person with a time machine.

"I have to hand it to you guys, this is seriously incredible," I told them. "I don't know how you managed to pull it off, but you did."

"Of course we did," Tommy crowed. "Ollie deserves the best."

"Speaking of which," Thea interrupted. "Where is my half-brained brother?"

"He's right here."

We all turned at the sound his voice and the minute my eyes landed on him, I felt my heart stop inside my chest.

Oliver Queen was standing in the entrance of the cafeteria in an WWII-era soldier's uniform, impeccably pressed and fitted over his impressive body. The brown jacket buttoned over his torso stretched across his broad chest, with all his medals and commendations over his left breast pocket. He had casually tucked his hat into the crook of his arm, and when my eyes finally made it to his face it was like all the air had disappeared from my lungs.

Of course I'd always known that Oliver Queen was a beautiful man. For crying out loud, I'd spent practically every day of the last three months with him, so it gave me a lot of time to stare at his perfect face. But tonight he was different. Maybe it was his groomed scruff, or his trimmed hair. Maybe it was how he held himself in his uniform. Or maybe it was the way his eyes sparkled as he stared at me, in the entrance of the cafeteria in the twinkling Christmas lights overhead.

I didn't know for certain.

The only thing I did know in that instant was that I had fallen head over heels in love with him.

"There he is," Tommy bellowed, rushing forward to greet his friend with a hug. "You sure clean up nice."

"Which is a pretty impressive feat, since I've been living in a hospital for the past three and a half months," Oliver grinned back.

Thea left my side so she could have her turn at a hug, but I stood rooted in place. My mouth had gone dry and every single skin cell on my body had gone flush. I felt like I was on fire just by his presence and I didn't know what the hell to do.

When Oliver emerged from Tommy and Thea's arms, he walked toward me. Every step he took echoed in my chest, my heart hammering in my ribcage. His eyes and his smile were focused on me and he was all I could see.

"Hey," he greeted.

I struggled to smile back. When that didn't work, I tried to talk instead.

"Hi," I answered. "You look...you look incredible."

"You took the words right out of my mouth," he murmured. His eyes took a quick venture down the length of my body and my skin lit up with fire again.

I struggled to swallow around the sudden golf ball stuck in the middle of my throat. "I think...I think this is the first time I've seen you in anything that wasn't a hospital gown and sweatpants."

"Yeah. I forgot how restricting actual clothes are."

His gentle, joking tone knocked a little of the nervousness out of my body as I let out a surprised chuckle. "And an army uniform, no less."

Tommy returned to the two of us, throwing his arms around both of our necks. "So is this or is this not a party? What will you two be drinking?"

"I'll take a red, if you have it," I answered a little desperately. I'd probably end up downing a whole bottle by myself just to deaden these lovestruck nerves fluttering around my body.

"Darling, we have everything and tonight you get to have whatever you want." Tommy winked cheekily. Then he turned to his best friend. "What about you, Ollie? What are you having?"

"Nothing right now. I have to be on a plane in five hours."

Tommy made a big show of rolling his eyes. "All the more reason for you to get sauced, buddy. But as you wish." And with that, he disappeared behind the bar to get my wine.

The dark-haired miscreant hadn't even been gone longer than a minute before I started fidgeting again. I had to do something quick before something came tumbling out of my mouth, something that was sure to get me in trouble. I just didn't know what.

Finally, I said the first non-embarrassing thing I could come up with. "I have to hand it to Tommy and Thea," I said in a nervous rush. "I didn't think they'd be able to transform this place into anything other than a tiny hospital cafeteria. But here we are."

Oliver snorted. "Well I think money had a lot to do with it."

"Hey, money isn't a substitute for vision," Tommy protested as he walked up to us with my wine. "Ollie, I hate to pull you away from your lovely doctor, but you have some other guests who want to shake hands with you before you ship off."

I eagerly accepted the wineglass Tommy offered me and watched as he and Oliver walked toward the entrance. That's when I noticed that more people had indeed shown up, including what seemed to be every single female surgical nurse. In the midst of the crowd there was one very male presence and I was a little surprised realize it was Roy. As Oliver and Tommy went to greet the crowd that had gathered, I made a beeline for the bored-looking, surly nurse.

"Hey, Speedy," I grinned as I elbowed him in the side. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm always up for free food and booze," he said with a shrug. "And Dream Boat's sister said I should show up, so I did." Then he not-so-subtly started craning his neck, peering over my head and around me.

A sly smile crept up my face. "Right. Well, if you're looking for the woman who invited you, I think she's trying to sneak a drink at the bar while her brother's occupied with a crowd of adoring fans." Then I pointed to the corner of the room where Thea was crouched surreptitiously behind the bar, fiddling with a bottle of wine.

"I should help her out," he hedged. "Corkscrews can be tricky."

I snickered. "Yeah, you show her how to work that corkscrew."

He scowled at me, but there was a faint sparkle in his eye, so knew he didn't mean it. Then he left my side to rush to Thea's, and I watched in slight amusement as her face lit up at the sight of Roy.

While everyone else was sufficiently occupied, I wandered over to the refreshments. I watched Roy and Thea flirt with one another while I sipped on my wine. The two seemed lost in their own little world, and every so often he'd say something that would elicit a chime-like laugh from the younger Queen sibling.

"What are you doing?"

Tommy had appeared behind me with no warning. I pointed to the corner of the cafeteria where Thea and Roy were giggling about something, their heads bent and close together.

"I'm watching young love unfold."

Tommy's eyes narrowed as he scrutinized the scene. "Ollie isn't going to be happy about this."

I rolled my eyes. "Well that's because he can be a sexist, misogynistic, overprotective ape."

He let out a surprised laugh. "I guess that's one way to put it."

I stuffed another meatball in my mouth and chewed thoughtfully as I continued to watch Roy and Thea. "In all honesty though, I think Roy would be good for Thea. He's down-to-earth and street smart. Thea needs someone in her life that's not as privileged as she is." I turned and grinned at my companion. "No offense."

"None taken. I happen to agree with you. If I had someone like you or Roy in my life growing up, I probably would have gotten my shit together much sooner than I did. Speaking of which…"

His tone trailed off, which made me turn to him with a curious head tilt. I was a little shocked to find a rare gravity in Tommy's blue eyes. What he was going to say next was serious, and it made my nerves shoot back up to eleven.

"I've known Ollie for our entire lives," he began. "So when he told me he was joining the Army, I was terrified. I thought he was going to get himself blown up or something and sure enough, I was right. Like I usually am."

His joke wasn't enough to hide the pain in his eyes, and my anxiety subsided enough to make me reach forward and grip his elbow in comfort.

"But you saved him. And...Dr. Smoak, I can't begin to explain how grateful we are to you for what you did for him. For saving him and keeping him sane all these weeks in the hospital."

His sincerity made my heart swell with emotion. Wordlessly I reached for him and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. "For the record," I whispered, "you never have to thank me for helping you. Any of you."

He hugged me back tightly around the waist. Then he pulled away to grin at me. "Seriously, Felicity. If you _ever_ need _anything_ , don't hesitate to reach out. You're family now, whether you like it or not."

The sentiment meant more than I could say or express. All I could do was beam back at him, my heart filled with a kind of warmth I never thought I could experience again.

But Tommy Merlyn wasn't the kind of guy who stayed serious for very long. Once the moment had passed, he took my empty wine glass from me. "I'm going to get you a refill and see if I can't crash Thea's flirting session with pretty boy over there. Stay where you are."

I chuckled as he left my presence and nibbled on a few more appetizers. I was contemplating another meatball when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Turning around, I saw Dr. Yamashiro smiling at me in a lovely, sleeveless black cocktail dress.

"Dr. Smoak, it's a wonderful change to see you out of your surgical scrubs," she greeted.

I smiled back at my therapist. I long since stopped being nervous in her presence. "And it's nice to see you when I'm not an anxious mess. Are you here by yourself?"

She shook her head and gestured toward the entrance of the cafeteria, where Oliver was still crowded with guests and admirers. "He's over there with Jonas. I think they're regaling a crowd of women about tales of how much they can lift."

We both shared a sardonic look that clearly said _men_. "I think Maseo was really good for Oliver, though. It brought out his competitive side. If it weren't for him, I don't think he'd be quite ready to go back."

"Are you OK with him going back, then?"

I sucked in a breath through my nostrils. "No, I'm not. But I've come to the realization that there's nothing I can really do to change it other than hope and pray that he comes back alive."

She smiled at me and placed a gentle hand on my elbow. "You've come a long way, Dr. Smoak. I'm really very proud of you."

I returned her grin with my own grateful one. "I couldn't have done it without you, Dr. Yamashiro."

At that moment, Tommy returned with another glass of wine, and that immediately caught Dr. Yamashiro's attention. "I'm going to get a vodka tonic and see if I can't lure my husband away with some white wine and dancing. I'll talk to you later."

When she left, Tommy and I carried on a conversation while I finished my second glass of wine in record time. Together we wandered back to the bar where Thea and Roy still (still!) stood, gabbing like they were the only people in the world.

"Yo, Speedy," I shouted to catch his attention. His jaw clenched and he turned his attention from Thea to glare at me. "Could you stop flirting with a girl way out of your league long enough to pour me another glass of wine?"

"I'm going to throw it in your face you dumb blonde," he muttered venomously under his breath, but he turned around and grabbed the wine.

Tommy grinned at my teasing and immediately jumped in on the fun. "You know, Thea, as your honorary older brother it's my duty to make sure you don't get into trouble. And pretty boy over there screams trouble."

It was Thea's turn to scowl. "You are hardly one to judge, Thomas Merlyn. You're the most troublesome person I know. Aside from my brother."

Roy refilled my glass, then turned to Thea. "Would you like to dance?" he asked.

"I would love to." She set aside her empty glass and took Roy's proffered hand with a smile.

"You watch those hands, young man!" Tommy shouted after them as Roy led Thea to the dance floor. "I know people who would scoop your eyeballs out of their sockets and wear them as earrings!"

"By 'people' do you mean Oliver?" I asked with a smirk.

"Yup," he smirked back.

I giggled as I took another sip of wine. Seconds later, the man himself walked up to us, having finally gotten away from his crowd of admirers.

"Tommy," he said in a sweet voice that I knew was immediately a farce, "why is my little sister dancing with that nurse over there?"

"Because she's got two working eyes," I retorted before Tommy could answer. "Roy's a hot piece and she knows it."

"Stop," Oliver growled, his eyes closed like it was painful for him to hear. Tommy snickered next to me.

"Let's get you a drink and try to forget about the hot nurse dancing with your little sister," Tommy said, disappearing behind the bar and pulling all different bottles and shakers to concoct some sort of drink that was sure to be deadly in large amounts.

Oliver seemed to be thinking the same thing because he said, "Please don't make it too strong. I need to be on a plane, remember."

The reminder of his imminent departure made me go cold all over, despite the wine I'd been knocking back since I got there. But I pushed the feeling away and turned a bright smile to Oliver.

"Quite a crowd for a soldier's going away party," I said conversationally. "I didn't even know you knew this many people."

"I know a lot of people," he answered. "What, do you think you're my only friend here in the hospital?"

"Frankly, yes."

My reply made him roll his eyes, and I giggled in response.

Tommy returned with his drink and Oliver took a tentative sip. "So!" Tommy shouted, his arm around Oliver's shoulders. "What do you think of the party so far?"

The other man smiled. "I have to hand it to you, Tommy, you sure know how to make a guy feel special."

"You _are_ special, man," Tommy insisted. "And trust me, this is nothing. If it wasn't for your stupid secret identity, this shindig would have been way bigger."

"Well then thank God for my secret identity," Oliver joked.

Eventually the man of honor was once again called away to converse with his guests. Every so often he would throw a look at me on the other side of the room and grimace, which made me laugh. While he was preoccupied, I conversed mostly with Thea and Roy and Tommy.

As the night wore on, people started leaving one by one until there were only a handful of people left. I glanced at the clock and realized it was only an hour before Oliver was set to leave.

My heart grew heavy with the realization. Would it be the last time I ever saw him? Was this the last hour I would get to spend in his presence?

I was mulling over these thoughts when he came up to me. "I just realized, Doc, that I've gone this entire party without asking you to dance. So," he lifted his hand and held it out to me with a soft smile on his face, "would you like to dance?"

My mouth immediately went dry as I stared up at him, dumbstruck. "I-I'm not much of a dancer," I stuttered.

"That makes two of us," he joked. And before I could give him another lame excuse, he took my elbow and slid his hand down my forearm, trailing fire as he went, until my fingers caught in his and led me onto the dance floor.

There were only a few other couples there: Dr. Yamashiro and her husband, Thea and Roy and Tommy with one of the PT fellows. They were all swaying to the slow swing song drifting over the speakers. Oliver brought me to the middle of the floor, taking my right hand in his and wrapping his other arm around my waist. At that point I was certain I had turned the same red shade as my dress, even under all the makeup Thea had layered on my face. I was sure my heart was pounding loud enough for everyone in the whole freaking room to hear.

Yet I did nothing to move away, and with that beautiful smile of his, Oliver started to move us in easy circles. I was grateful for the first few minutes, at least because I kept looking down at our feet to make sure I didn't step on him.

Once we settled into a rhythm, there was really nothing to keep me from looking at him. Finally I brought my eyes back to his and felt as if all the oxygen in the room had suddenly disappeared because the way his blue irises were boring into mine felt like I had been thrown into a vacuum, weightless and breathless.

The wine certainly hadn't helped my impulse control because his eyes compelled me to blurt the first thing that came to mind.

"Thank you."

His expression turned bewildered. "What are you thanking me for?"

Well that was a perfectly fair question. What _was_ I thanking him for?

"For a lot," I answered. "For being my friend while you were here. For your service. For putting up with me crying on you all the time. For listening when I needed you."

His grip on me tightened and I was so hyper aware of everything he did that it made my already racing heart speed up even more. "You don't have to thank me for any of that."

"Yes I do," I insisted. "You were a really good friend."

His eyebrow quirked upward. "Why are you using the past tense?"

I shook my head a little. "Sorry, you're right. That was unintentional. I mean, you are a really good friend." My lips turned upward in a tiny smile. "Also, you helped me figure out that I don't want to be here anymore."

That seemed to surprise him. "Oh?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "I don't like it here in Germany. I never have. I guess I just sort of exiled myself here after Cooper died. But this place represents nothing but misery for me."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to move back to the States. See if there are any hospitals that need a trauma surgeon." I shrugged. "Who knows? I might end up back in Vegas. Or maybe Starling City."

That brought a wide smile to his face. "I think you should definitely move to Starling City."

Ever since I told Digg I was leaving, I'd been entertaining thoughts of moving to Starling. It would be wonderful to live close to Thea and Tommy and Oliver. But the minute Oliver came home, he'd win Laurel back, and I'd see him and her everywhere. Together. Holding hands. Him holding her the way he was holding me right now.

The images were like shards of glass right in my heart. But I struggled to push them aside. Tonight wasn't about me. It was about Oliver.

"Maybe," I answered him. I tried to take on a playful grin. "Hey, if I move to Starling and you propose to Laurel, will you invite me to the wedding?"

His face went blank, and my pain turned to confusion. But before I could ask what he was thinking, he glanced around the empty room. Then he stepped away from me but still held me hand. "Follow me."

Without another word, he was dragging me out of the cafeteria and down the hall. He stopped for a second at the nurse's station to grab a pad of paper and a pen, then he led me to the elevators all the way to the helipad.

"Oliver?" I asked in confusion. "What are we doing here?"

It was dark, save for the blinking red lights lining the landing pad. We had an unimpeded view of the Landstuhl horizon, which wasn't much, but the sky was clear and the stars twinkled like glitter on a black canvas.

A gust of wind blew through and I shivered in my thin dress. Noticing this, Oliver shrugged off his uniform jacket and threw them over my shoulders.

"I needed to get you alone," he answered me as he lowered himself to sit on the concrete. I followed his lead. Then he handed me the pad and pen. "Could you do me a favor and write one last letter for me?"

I was confused. I'd stopped writing letters for him ever since Tommy and Thea showed up to visit, since they were the only people he ever wrote to.

"Why?"

"Because," he hedged. "It's important. I need to get this out."

I sighed and took the pad and pen for him. The lights around us were dim, but it was enough to write by. "All right. Ready when you are."

He took in a deep breath. He wasn't looking at me, but instead looking out at the night sky, the stars dotting the horizon and the moon hovering over them. "I've never been good at putting my feelings to words, but I'm going to try."

I paused to look up and stare at him. "Are you starting the letter?"

"Yeah, I am."

"What about the salutation?"

"Leave it for the end."

I rolled my eyes. "That completely defeats the point of a salutation."

"No, just write the salutation later," he said impatiently. "I'm trying to be honest here, and I need to get these words out before I lose the nerve. Please, Felicity, just write."

I sighed. "Fine."

He took in another breath and repeated himself. "I've never been good at putting my feelings into words, but I'm going to try.

"I've been a spoiled, rich brat my entire life. That's not going to come as a surprise to anyone. Everything that I ever wanted was at my fingertips and I took that for granted. Being in the Army changed all of that for me. The Army taught me about discipline and hard work. It taught me that in order to get what I wanted, I had to jump through hoops to get it. For a spoiled rich kid, it was pretty much a miracle that these lessons got through to me at all.

"Something the Army also taught me was unexpected. It taught me about loss. I thought I knew loss before I joined the Army, but this kind of loss is something I never thought I could feel. I've had to bury people I considered brothers. I've watched as men were blown apart in front of me. I've had to deal with the emotional pain of losing people who meant the world to me.

"All of that was difficult, almost impossible to bear. But I know one thing, and it's this: none of that even compares to how I feel at the thought of losing you."

My heart clenched. Oliver was still staring at the distance as he was baring his soul, but I realized in that instant he was writing to Laurel. This was his goodbye letter to her. My hands started shaking, and it wasn't from the cold.

"Losing you would end me. The moment I met you, the moment you spoke, it brought a smile to my face. For once, I met someone I could be myself around. You made me feel like more than just some spoiled rich kid. You made me feel like the most important person alive. You made me feel love, real, true, soulmate level love for the first time ever.

"The Army might have taught me about hard work and discipline, but you taught me what it was like to be a better person. A better man. _You_ made me a better man."

Tears were starting to pool in the bottom of my eyes at his words. What a lucky woman Laurel was, I thought bitterly to myself. If she didn't take him back after this, she was a total idiot.

"I'm going back to war for my last eight weeks. If I make it through the other side, I'm getting out of the Army because I want to be with you. Your face is what will help me through these two months. Your smile and your laugh are the things I will be holding onto when I fall asleep. And your laugh is what will bring me home.

"All I ask is that you wait for me. Please give me a chance to prove that I'm a better man, and the one for you. I'm going to do everything I can to make sure I come back alive and in one piece. But if I don't make it, please, please always remember that you were the lone candle in my darkest nights, and that I will always love you. Always.

"Love, Oliver."

I sniffed as I signed his name. How ironic that as soon as I got my heart stitched back together, another soldier would come along and break it. And he didn't even have to die to do it.

The door to the helipad slammed open and we both jumped at the sound.

"Ollie!" Thea shouted. "Your ride is here. You have to go."

He nodded. "Just one second!" Then he turned back to me, a sad smile gracing his face. "I guess this is it."

I nodded, unable to say what I really wanted to. Those words were locked in my heart forever now. They would follow me to my grave.

"I guess it is."

He scooted closer to me and pulled me into his arms, giving me the warmest hug. I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around him in return, savoring this last gift. Because it really was the last gift. He might die when he went back to war, and even if he survived, he would go back to Starling City, back to his beloved Laurel.

It seemed I would be forever destined to love men I could never have.

When he finally pulled away, he looked me in the eyes, his sad smile punctuated by the tears in his shining blue eyes. "One last thing?"

I nodded, quickly swiping at my own tears. He was shipping back off to war, probably drowning in fear. He didn't need to bear my sadness as well.

He reached up to cup my cheek. It was the tenderest of touches, and I unconsciously leaned into it.

"Go back to the top of the letter and address it, 'Dear Felicity.'"

And before I could even fully register what he said or what it even meant, he got up and walked away, disappearing with Thea and Tommy behind the helipad door.


	14. Chapter 14

_To: oliver. .mil  
_ _From: felicity. .civ  
_ _Subject: Greetings from Germany_

 _Dear Oliver,_

 _Thea and Tommy left the day after you did. They both reassure me that they've made it back to the States safely, but they're experiencing some pretty gnarly jet lag. I hope that's not the case with you._

 _In other news, I had to meet with Colonel Waller this morning. She didn't look very happy, but then again she never is. Did you ever get the chance to meet her while you were here? I hope for your sake you didn't._

 _I know what you're probably going to say; it's not exactly wise for me to be badmouthing my boss over DOD issued email, but she's not going to be my boss for much longer. The reason I had to meet with her this morning was because I was turning in my two weeks notice. She tried to offer me more money and oversight of the whole trauma department, but there's really nothing in the world that could compel me to stay here in Germany even a week longer._

 _Well, maybe if you decided to move here. But even then it would be a stretch._

 _Speaking of which, your last letter made me cry. I cried as I wrote it for you, I cried after you left, I cried every single time I reread your letter. And I've reread it every single day._

 _The thing is, you left before I got to respond, so I guess this email will have to do._

 _I'm a lot like you, Oliver. I've never been good at putting words to my emotions. Or I suppose the better answer would be_ proper _words to my emotions, because as my mother and pretty much anyone who knows me will tell you, I've never really been at a loss for words in my entire life._

 _So here goes._

 _When Cooper died, I didn't think I'd ever be able to live or love again. I thought he was it for me, and I'd never get a second chance._

 _But then you came along. And you opened up my heart in ways I didn't think were possible. You were there for me when I needed you most. You made me believe in myself again. You made me believe that I deserved more than the hell that I exiled myself to._

 _My love for Cooper pales in comparison to how I love you. You're not my second chance at true love; you're my soulmate. I'm sure of it._

 _So this is it. If you thought how I grieved Cooper's death was intense, imagine how I'll fall apart if you die. With that in mind, I absolutely_ forbid _you to die. Do you understand? You're also not allowed to undo any of the hard work I had to do when stitching you back together._

 _Anyway, I should wrap up this email. I have a Skype interview with Starling City General Hospital in a few hours and I should prepare. Try not to make myself look like the mess I usually do._

 _Take care, Oliver. Know that there's a lovesick woman in Germany waiting your return._

 _Love,  
_ _Felicity_

* * *

 _OLLIEQ52 is online  
_ _QUEENTHEA is online_

 _OLLIEQ52: speedy!_

 _QUEENTHEA: did you know that's what felicity calls roy?  
_ _QUEENTHEA: he told me that the other day  
_ _QUEENTHEA: you 2 are clearly meant for each other since you come up with the same lame nicknames_

 _OLLIEQ52: look i need a favor_

 _QUEENTHEA: what_

 _OLLIEQ52: felicity says she's applying for a job at starling general  
_ _OLLIEQ52: can you put in a good word with mom? since she's on the board_

 _QUEENTHEA: yeah totally  
_ _QUEENTHEA: btw we haven't talked about your relationship with your doctor  
_ _QUEENTHEA: i approve_

 _OLLIEQ52: im glad_

 _OLLIEQ52 has logged off  
_ _QUEENTHEA has logged off_

* * *

 _To: felicity. .civ  
_ _From: oliver. .mil  
_ _Subject: RE: Greetings from Germany_

 _Dear Felicity,_

 _First of all, you never look like a mess. Even when you just spent five hours in surgery on no hours of sleep, you always looked like you were ready for some sort of magazine spread._

 _Second of all, the jet lag this time around wasn't so terrible. Mostly it's just been the continuous mortar fire keeping me up. I hear it going off in the distance and I know what it is, but I can't sleep through it anymore. Every explosion that goes off brings me back to the day that landed me in your care in the first place. Because that's the thing about war. No matter how long you've been away from it, it stays in your body. Every muscle remembers what happened, and every nerve is screaming at me not to repeat it._

 _However I should make one thing clear: as much as it sucked that I got blown up, I don't regret it at all. Because if I hadn't gotten blown up, I never would have met you. And meeting you is worth going through a million IED explosions._

 _But since I've already met you, I'm not really looking to get myself into a million IED explosions, so rest assured when I promise you that I'm trying my hardest to come back to you in one piece._

 _So far so good, though. We haven't gotten into anything. Since this is a secure DOD server and you are a DOD employee (for the next two weeks anyway), I can tell you that most of what I've been doing since I got back are supply missions. We haven't run into any trouble, which is a relief._

 _Since half of my old squad is still in the hospital recovering from the IED attack, they assigned me to a different one. That kind of sucks because I'm this new guy who's only going to be around for two months before leaving. They don't trust me and they don't have a reason to trust me, so it's hard to get them to listen to anything I have to say. I'm at a loss for ideas to motivate them._

 _I keep rereading that last part of your email. I've read it so much that I think I've memorized it. The fact that you love me back has to be some sort of miracle because I never dreamed in a million years that a gorgeous, intelligent and hilarious woman like you would ever look at me as anything but cannon fodder. But here we are._

 _And since we're being honest here, I'm really sorry for not telling you about my feelings sooner. It's just I knew you'd finally started letting yourself grieve for Cooper, and I didn't want to overwhelm you with too much. In fact, I wasn't sure I was going to tell you at all, but then you mentioned something about Laurel and I couldn't leave without at least setting the record straight._

 _It's true that I joined the Army in a half-baked attempt at winning her back, but like I told you, the Army changed me. And I think all the loss I suffered while I was here gave me an even deeper capacity to love. It made me realize that my affection for Laurel and my desire to win her back was all that my shallow, insincere, spoiled brat self was capable of. Now, as a better man, I know that the love I feel for you runs deeper than anything I've ever experienced with anyone. And I'm sure it's deeper than anything I will ever experience again._

 _I'm counting down the days until I get to see your face again. Until then, I remain wholly and completely yours._

 _Love,  
_ _Oliver_

* * *

 _To: oliver. .mil  
_ _From: felicity. .civ  
_ _Subject: GOOD NEWS!_

 _I GOT THE JOB! I'M GOING TO BE A TRAUMA SURGEON AT STARLING CITY GENERAL HOSPITAL!_

 _I got the news today, and I was so shocked! I mean, I only had the interview a few days ago! They didn't bring me in to tour the facilities or meet the other surgeons or anything. They just hired me, sight unseen. Maybe they talked to my references? It's bewildering how quick they hired me, but whatever. I'll take it!_

 _When I told my mom that I was moving, she squealed so loud I had to hold the phone like three feet away from my ear. So needless to say she's pretty excited. I've still got a week and a half left here, and then I'm going to spend a week in Vegas with my mom once I'm back stateside._

 _I'm going to enlist Thea and Tommy's help with the apartment hunting. What's the cost of living like in Starling? Do you know? Maybe I shouldn't be asking you guys, since you're all the scions of wealth._

 _Once we're both in Starling City, you're going to have to show me around. I've only ever been there a couple of times on academic bowl trips and spelling bees. I never got to see the fun stuff._

 _But I'm sorry about your men not listening to you. In the hospital when we're doing team building exercises, we all split up into teams based on our specialty and play Taboo. Management says it helps foster community and work on our communication skills, but it always turns into a bloodbath because doctors are extremely competitive. One time I threatened an OB/GYN with a scalpel and Roy had to confiscate it from me._

 _I guess what I'm saying is don't play Taboo. Maybe something more mellow, like Candy Land. Or Operation._

 _At the risk of sounding too clingy too early, I have to say I really miss you. Every time I pass your old room here, I look up like a reflex expecting you to be there. But your bed's just empty and the light's off. It really sucks because who's going to tell me what's going on in Georg's life now? I've had to start tuning in myself like some kind of heathen. (By the way, Georg and Adelina are getting a divorce and guess who's there to comfort her? Three guesses and the first two don't count.)_

 _I'm selfishly relieved that you haven't been up to anything too dangerous since you went back. And so is Thea, by the way. Did you know she set up an alert on her phone that counts down the day to your return? I taught her how to do that, after she saw that my phone did the same thing._

 _Please continue to stay safe. I can't wait to see you again._

 _Love,  
_ _Felicity_

* * *

 _To:  
_ _From:  
_ _Subject: Apartments in Starling_

 _Hi Tommy,_

 _So update: I'm moving to Starling City, because I got a job as a trauma surgeon at Starling General! I'm really excited. I start in January because they want to give me time to find an apartment and settle back into the states. And for that I need your help._

 _Could you keep an eye out for me for living situations? I'm looking for a place close to the hospital, but not too expensive. Somewhere between $800-1,100 a month._

 _Looking forward to seeing you again. Also counting down the days til you, Thea, Oliver and I are in the same place again._

 _Felicity_

* * *

 _To: felicity. .civ  
_ _From: oliver. .mil  
_ _Subject: RE: GOOD NEWS!_

 _Congratulations! I knew you'd get the job!_

 _And why doesn't it surprise me that you almost shanked an OB/GYN over a game like Taboo? Remind me never to play charades with you. I don't like the idea facing the business end of your scalpel ever again. Unless I'm grievously wounded. But not by you._

 _But I did take your advice. I was trying to find some sort of team building exercise and remember how I told you about our Afghan partners teaching us about archery? Well I had my men construct bows and arrows out of stuff we had around the FOB and then we went and made makeshift targets. It worked like a charm and now they're listening to the things I say._

 _And wait, hold on, Georg and Adelina are getting divorced? Does that mean Adelina and Franz are going to get together? What about the baby? I need answers!_

 _Still taking it easy on this side. No major skirmishes outside of pickup wrestling matches. I know, I know, I'm too old to be rough housing with these youths, but when a private insults my marksmanship skills, I can't just let that slide. No, I haven't torn anything yet, and yes I'm telling the truth._

 _I miss you too. It's really hard waking up without you there to laugh with and tease. Last night I dreamt that I was back in the hospital with you on the helipad and we were eating that disgusting lime Jell-O from the cafeteria and we were just talking and chuckling and you were leaning against me and I had my arm around you. I swear I could almost smell your shampoo. But then the dream turned dark when a flaming helicopter came hurtling toward us out of nowhere and I pushed you out of the way and it landed just yards away from us with a huge bang. When I woke up I realized it was just the mortar fire again._

 _I can't wait to be away from this place and away from all the noises. My PTSD isn't nearly as bad as some of the other guys here, but it's hard to get any sleep. Now that I'm thinking about it, why did I never make you sing me to sleep while I was there? I've heard you humming to yourself before whenever we were eating lunch, and you had a lovely humming voice. But you've never sung to me. I'm a little hurt. I'm also demanding you put on a show for me when I get back._

 _One of my men just looked over my shoulder and caught a glimpse of this email. Now he wants a picture of you. Please do not oblige him. I want to keep you all to myself._

 _Take care of yourself, Felicity. I'll see you soon._

 _Love,  
_ _Oliver_

* * *

 _To:  
_ _From: queenthea  
_ _Subject: Thanksgiving_

 _OMG CONGRATULATIONS ON THE JOB! THIS IS SO EXCITING!_

 _So since you're moving to Starling right in time for the holidays, I think it's really important for you to spend Thanksgiving with us, and by us I mean Ollie, my parents and me. Tommy might even be there too. It really depends if he can get away from his psycho father._

 _Also don't hesitate to invite your mom! I'd love to meet her!_

 _Please say yes. After all you did for Oliver while he was away, you're practically family, and Thanksgiving is a time for family._

 _Also, I know Tommy is going to offer to help you move, but I'm repeating the offer. I'll help decorate!_

 _Get back to me soon!_

 _Kisses,  
_ _Thea_

* * *

 _To:  
_ _From:  
_ _Subject: RE: Apartments in Starling_

 _Oh hell yeah! That's great news!_

 _And of course I can keep an eye out. In fact, I'm pretty sure I know the perfect place for you. It's only a couple blocks away from the hospital and it's got good security. The landlord is a good buddy of mine. I'll ask him if he has any vacancies in his building and I'll get back to you. And of course Thea and I would love to help when you start moving. Just give us the word and we're there._

 _By the way, we haven't talked about it yet, but congrats on you and Ollie. I'm so glad he's found someone like you._

 _See you soon,  
_ _Tommy_

* * *

 _To: oliver. .mil  
_ _From: felicity. .civ  
_ _Subject: RE: RE: GOOD NEWS!_

 _Why for the love of God do I have so many shoes, Oliver? Why? I'm always online shopping for shoes because in my head I'm thinking, "Oh, I don't have a pair to go with this dress," or "I don't have a pair of black, sensible flats," or "This would be SO PERFECT for a night out" except I never stop to consider that I hate that dress, the reason I don't have a pair of black sensible flats is because I don't_ need _a pair of black sensible flats because I work in a hospital and I never go out. Ever._

 _This is a big rambling rant to lead into the fact that I am currently packing up my stuff to get ready for the big move and I have come to the conclusion that I have too many shoes. And it's not like I can even give them away because my shoe size is smaller than the average German woman's. Whatever. I'll probably end up giving most of them to my mom. She'll get better use out of them than I will._

 _I can, however, give away a lot of my clothes, which I plan on doing. Question: how cold does it get in Starling City? I've acquired a lot of winter clothes since I moved here, but I'm trying to figure out if I'll need it all. Does it snow? I never saw snow before I moved here. I thought it was magical for about five seconds and then I got over it real quick after I slipped and fell on my backside._

 _I'm really sorry to hear about the mortar fire. Cooper used to get triggered by loud noises too, which made the Fourth of July a nightmare. When you come back, we can take a long vacation on the beach, where there aren't any sudden loud noises and no big crowds. That's what Dr. Yamashiro suggests. She said it's best to decompress after returning from a deployment, and not to throw yourself immediately into society afterward. We can go to Coast City. Or maybe we can go hiking in upstate Washington. Or maybe you can go by yourself. It's totally up to you. You should do whatever is best for your mental health._

 _And speaking of mental health, Dr. Yamashiro's setting me up with my own counselor when I move to Starling. She said she has a colleague over there who would be perfect for me, and I have to say I'm really happy about it which is surprising. If you'd have told me a few months ago that I was willingly seeing a therapist and moving back to the U.S., I would have thought you were the one who needed a therapist. But here I am, doing all of these things. It's crazy how much life can change in such a short period of time._

 _In the world of_ Liebesbriefe _, Adelina took out a restraining order against Georg, but Franz is taking matters into his own hands, and he secretly hired a hitman. But what Franz doesn't know is that the hitman he hired is Georg's cousin, Jakob, but Jakob doesn't know that the target is his cousin. Insane._

 _I'm going to ignore the fact that you are willingly wrestling with young boys your sister's age because I know that there's nothing I can do to get you to stop. I only ask that you be extremely careful._

 _The reason I didn't sing to you is because I cared about your physical health. I didn't want to cause your eardrums to implode with my off key singing, but if you insist that I sing for you when you return you have only yourself to blame when you end up in the hospital again._

 _Against your express wishes, I've attached a photo for the men in your squad. I hope they like it. But no matter what they think, I will always be yours._

 _Love,  
_ _Felicity_

 _[ATTACHED PHOTO OF MONKEY FLASHING HIS ANUS AT THE CAMERA]_

* * *

 _To: smoaknvegashottie987  
_ _From:  
_ _Subject: Flight information_

 _Mom,_

 _Below I've attached my flight information. I should be landing in Vegas at 8 p.m. Monday. Let me know if you can pick me up. If not, that's totally fine! I'll take a cab back to the house._

 _I have a lot to tell you, but first I have a question: what are your plans for Thanksgiving? Because if you're not doing anything, a few of my friends invited me to their house in Starling City where I'm going to be living, and I'd like you to come and meet them. Is that cool with you?_

 _Let me know. I can't wait._

 _Love,  
_ _Felicity_

* * *

 _QUEENTHEA is online  
_ _WHIZKIDTOMMY25 is online  
_ _OLLIEQ52 is online_

 _OLLIEQ52: i'm going to tell mom and dad_

 _WHIZKIDTOMMY25: omg ollie you're such a tattle tale_

 _OLLIEQ52: no you idiot  
_ _OLLIEQ52: i'm going to tell them about being in the army_

 _QUEENTHEA: whoa  
_ _QUEENTHEA: you sure bro?_

 _OLLIEQ52: yeah_

 _WHIZKIDTOMMY25: you better bring felicity with you when you do  
_ _WHIZKIDTOMMY25: she's the reason you're still alive_

 _QUEENTHEA: yeah  
_ _QUEENTHEA: & she can stitch you back up after mom kills you_

 _WHIZKIDTOMMY25: lololololol_

 _OLLIEQ52: thanks for the confidence_

 _OLLIEQ52 has logged off  
_ _QUEENTHEA has logged off  
_ _WHIZKIDTOMMY25 has logged off_

* * *

 _To: felicity. .civ  
_ _From: oliver. .mil  
_ _Subject: Your last email = LOL_

 _My fellow squad members are still roaring from laughter at the photo you sent. And that's nothing to say how hard I was laughing when I saw it. They really want to meet you now. One of the guys (we call him Sketch, but his real name is Scott), says you're too good for me, and I have to agree. Maybe it's a good thing you're having your head shrunk on a regular basis. Then you can work out what you're doing with a whackjob like me._

 _(But it does occur to me that I don't have a picture of you. That should change.)_

 _As for the idea of going on a vacation with you after deployment, nothing would make me happier. This probably won't come as a surprise to you, but my family and I actually have our own island in the North China Sea. Aside from the contractors who keep up the mansion once a month, it's completely deserted. We can stay there for a few weeks. Just us._

 _As for the weather in Starling, it does get cold, but probably not nearly as bad as Germany. The coldest winter I ever remember was the freak blizzard of 2004 when we got 20 inches of snow in a single evening. The city didn't know how to deal with any of it, so we ended up stranded in our homes for two days while the city crews tried to clear it up._

 _Today we did a patrol of a nearby village. There was a group of boys playing with a worn out soccer ball in the middle of the street and one of them kicked it too hard and ended lobbing it toward our squad, and then all of a sudden I was part of the game. We played for like half an hour before I had to go back, and when I told them I had to leave they tried to convince me not to go. I think before I leave this place for good, I'm going to try and figure out a way to get them a brand new soccer ball._

 _I forget this about being stationed here sometimes. It's not necessarily all about fighting. Sometimes it's just about hanging out with the locals and trying to share in their lives and cultures. Even though I don't necessarily enjoy the violence of it all, there will be parts of the mission I'll miss, and this is the biggest one._

 _My squad has the day off tomorrow, so we're going to go back to the village and see if there's anything fun to do. For my squad brothers it means booze and hookers. For me that means finding my mom a gift that will placate her anger when she finds out I enlisted in the Army and lied about it. Because I'm going to come clean to my parents when I get home. Wish me luck._

 _How's the apartment hunting? Have you found anything you like?_

 _You might get tired of reading it every email, but I just have to say it. I miss you, and I really can't wait until I come back home._

 _Love,  
_ _Oliver_

* * *

 _To: oliver. .mil  
_ _From: felicity. .civ  
_ _Subject: Goodbyes suck_

 _The hospital threw me a going away party today since tomorrow's my last day. I'm crying as I type this because even though I hated it here in Germany, I really am going to miss some of the people. I'm mostly going to miss Digg and Lyla and Sara and Roy. I wish I could pack them in my suitcases with me._

 _Did you ever get to meet Lyla or Sara? She said she wanted to go to your going away party, but she had her hands full with Sara. I wish you got to meet her. Lyla's sort of like the older sister I never had. She's full of wisdom and strength, and she's an incredible role model. Also she was in the special forces for a while and now she's working with ARGUS, making her a certified badass._

 _And Sara's just the sweetest, most chill toddler you'll ever meet in your life. She's got these big brown eyes and she's still clumsy when she walks around, but she has just this total fascination with all shiny things. I'm going to miss that little nugget. I was there when she was born and I got to see Digg hold her for the first time. The way his eyes lit up when he first looked at her was probably the only fond memory I have of this place. Other than you, of course._

 _Saying goodbye to Roy was equally sucky. If Digg and Lyla are like my older siblings, Roy is like my younger one. He always bugs the crap out of me and knows which buttons to push, but hell, he's amazing at his job. And the things he's had to overcome to get to where he is now...damn. He's so incredibly strong, and I'm going to miss his sensible presence in my life._

 _In all honesty, I didn't expect to feel so many emotions about leaving this place. But that might just be my head shrinking working — I'm looking at the positives more than the negatives._

 _To answer your question, yes, we did find an apartment that I like. It's only a couple of blocks away from the hospital, so I can actually sleep in my own bed when I'm on-call. But knowing me, I'll probably end up sleeping at the hospital anyway._

 _I love the idea of escaping to a deserted island with you. As long as we don't have to parachute in or anything. YOU may be an air assault soldier, but I'm pretty terrified of heights._

 _From what Thea's told me about your mother, I really don't think there's anything in the world you could get her that could soften the blow of, "Oh hey, Mom, remember how I told you I've been in Asia for the past five years? Just kidding, I was in the Army and I almost got killed in an insurgent attack! Happy Thanksgiving!" But for what it's worth, I don't see any parent staying angry with you once they realize what you've been through and what you've done for your country._

 _Unless your mom's a communist. In which case, get her something red._

 _I never get tired of reading you miss me because it means I'm the only one. In fact, I'm typing this email in your old room. The nurses cleaned according to protocol, but there's still something about the atmosphere in here that reminds me of you. The sheets don't smell like you anymore, but it's like your presence has lingered here. Kind of like a residual energy. Does that sound creepy? I'm sorry, I don't mean to be. I'm just trying to show that I miss you too._

 _Once I leave here I won't have anything concrete left of you really. I'm sort of scared that when I leave Germany all traces of you will disappear and it will all turn out to be some kind of dream. Like you never existed and we never met and I'll just be back in the United States, except pining for something that never happened._

 _I'm going a little batty in my nostalgia here. The goodbyes are getting to me, I guess._

 _I love you. That's the only way I can think to end this rambling email. I love you._

 _Love,  
_ _Felicity_

 _P.S. After tomorrow, this email account will be inactivated. I've backed up all the emails, but my personal email address is . Also, here's a real picture this time. But now I demand one of you in return._

 _[ATTACHED PHOTO OF FELICITY SURROUNDED BY DIGG AND ROY AND LYLA AND SARA AT HER GOING AWAY PARTY]_

* * *

 _To:  
_ _From: smoaknvegashottie987  
_ _Subject: RE: Flight information_

 _IM SOOO EXCITED!_

 _i dont have any plans for thanksgiving. this is ur 1st thanksgiving back home and i wanted to spend it with u. as long as u include me in ur plans i dont care._

 _i cant wait to see u sweetie!_

 _3 ur mom_

* * *

 _To: queenthea  
_ _From:  
_ _Subject: RE: Thanksgiving_

 _My mom said she would love to come to Thanksgiving. And thank you so much for inviting us. I really appreciate it._

 _By the way, do you think your mom is going to hate me? I mean, I know you mentioned before that she was pretty much in love with Laurel and since I'm very much not Laurel I'm worried that she's going to like give me the third degree. It's been a long time since I've met a boyfriend's parents._

 _Holy crap. I just referred to Oliver as my boyfriend. Is that weird? We haven't even talked about it. Maybe we should talk about it._

 _How's school going? Have you caught up on all the stuff you missed yet, or did you just charm your teachers into letting you out of it?_

 _I miss you a lot, but I'm excited to see you soon._

 _Love,  
_ _Felicity_

* * *

 _To:  
_ _From: oliver. .mil  
_ _Subject: I miss you_

 _Today was rough._

 _We were doing a light patrol of the village, but near the end of the patrol there were some insurgents and we got into a firefight. It wasn't nearly as bad as the IED attack, but it was enough to land some of my men in the med bay. I didn't sustain much damage — just a few scrapes and bruises. I promise, I really am fine._

 _I really start to lose hope, though. We've been in this country for how many years now? We've lost how many men? We've spent how much money? And we're no closer to stabilizing the region. It feels like that Greek myth, with that multi-headed monster. Whenever we cut off one, two more grow in its place._

 _When I think about it like that, I start to get indignant. Like I'm leaving and just giving up. But then I have to remind myself that we never should have gotten into this war in the first place. Not if we weren't 100 percent committed to the cause. And none of us really are. We're just tired. Tired of the violence, tired of all the blood. Tired of seeing our friends die in front of us._

 _And today was a really rough day to miss you. One of my men got shot in the ribcage, and I wished so much that you were there to help. You would have known what to do._

 _I'm sorry to make this email such a bummer. I keep pretending that you're here with me and I'm telling you this stuff in person and you're smiling at me. I miss your smile. I miss everything about you. I wish so much that I was back in that hospital, because as much as it was hell for you, it was a little bit of heaven in a nine-month period of hell._

 _I'm writing this to you while you're on an airplane. Let me know when you've landed in the States so I know you're safe._

 _Love,  
_ _Oliver_

* * *

 _To:  
_ _From: queenthea  
_ _Subject: RE: RE: Thanksgiving_

 _OMG this is going to be the best Thanksgiving ever! Tommy just confirmed that he's going to be with us since his crazy dad is going out of the country for the week. It's going to be you, Ollie and Tommy and your mom and everyone. I haven't been excited for a Thanksgiving in years, but I seriously can't wait!_

 _And my mom is NOT going to hate you. I promise. If anything it's going to take her time to convince her that Ollie loves you and that you're not some fling of the week, but if he comes clean to her about the Army thing (like he says he will ::eyeroll emoji::) then she'll be so freaking blown away that you saved his life that she'll want to adopt you. Which would make it super weird when you and Ollie get married. ::winky face::_

 _Speaking of which, I can't believe you guys haven't defined the relationship! It's clear you two love each other though, so the conversation shouldn't be TOO weird. Just be like, "Hey, so I can call you my boyfriend to my mom, right?" And he'll be like, "Yeah, totally."_

 _School's not so bad. I'm just so ready for this shit to be over. Senior year is totally useless, just like you said._

 _Can't wait to see you!_

 _Love,  
_ _Thea_

* * *

 _To: oliver. .mil  
_ _From:  
_ _Subject: RE: I miss you_

 _What's the name of your doctor over there? Does s/he know about your previous injuries? Do they know to check for blood clots? Or any irregular heart patterns in your EKG from the meds you were on during the recovery?_

 _Also, what's the IP address you have on base?_

 _I'm sorry that your day sucked so much. I wish I was there with you. Or that you were with me. Either way I just wish we were together._

 _I landed just a few hours ago. It took me a while to get through customs and get all my stuff and prove that I'm not a terrorist. I'm actually writing this in my mom's car right now and she's babbling a mile a minute about all the goings on in in Vegas since I left. Did you know Trent Reeves is getting married to a mail order bride? I sure didn't._

 _What's struck me so far is how much sunshine there is. I mean, obviously, this is Nevada which means desert, but I just don't remember it being this bright. Was there always this much sunshine? Did everything in the white horizon used to reflect like this, like some sort of imagined heaven? Or is that just how I perceive everything since I fell in love with you?_

 _My mom's asking who I'm emailing. I told her it's my boyfriend. That's cool if I call you that, right? My boyfriend? Is that an accurate descriptor for what we are, boyfriend and girlfriend? I don't want to get presumptuous or anything, but that's what I call you. In my head. My boyfriend._

 _Now she's squealing in excitement. So if by chance you don't consider yourself my boyfriend, I will have lost my ears for nothing._

 _I have to wrap this email up really quickly because my mother is demanding details. I hope your day is better. Please, PLEASE take care of yourself._

 _Also send me a picture otherwise my mother will think I made you up._

 _Love,  
_ _Felicity_

* * *

 _To:  
_ _From:  
_ _Subject: Lease_

 _What's up doc? Hope the flight was good and hope you're having a good time with your mom. I hear she's SMOAKIN hot!_

 _Lame puns aside, I worked everything out with your landlord and he gave me the final lease papers, which I'm attaching to this email. Everything should be in order. All you have to do is sign and date on the dotted line and you will officially be a Starling City resident._

 _Welcome to the neighborhood!_

 _Tommy_

* * *

 _To:  
_ _From: oliver. .mil  
_ _Subject: RE: RE: I miss you_

 _You don't need to hack my medical records. I'm fine. I really mean it._

 _Today was better than the last time I emailed you. My squad was on cleaning duty because they want us to take it easy after the skirmish. It sounds kinda lame, but it's a lot more fun than it sounds. We were goofing off the entire time and afterward we had a game of poker. We played with whatever we had on hand, like buttons, headphones, pens. I ended up winning a paperclip, two pennies and a condom._

 _As for the question you posed in your last email, I really don't think "boyfriend/girlfriend" is an accurate description of what we are. To be honest, I feel much more strongly about you than just a girlfriend. The word seems too trite. Too restricting. But then again, "soulmate" sounds a little dramatic. So I guess "boyfriend/girlfriend" is sufficient for the moment._

 _By the way, Thea told me she and Tommy are helping you move in next week. I love Tommy, but he's really terrible with home stuff. He's probably going to want to hire people to hang the picture frames and stuff. Or he'll get really drunk and think he can put together a bookcase that ends up looking like a modern art piece._

 _I wish I could be there. I'm way handier than Tommy is. But I suppose I'll see the apartment soon enough. Five more weeks. I'm counting down the days._

 _I hope you're enjoying your time in Vegas with your mom. A woman as beautiful and bright as you deserves to be in that sunlight._

 _Love,  
_ _Oliver_

 _[ATTACHED PHOTO OF OLIVER IN HIS UNIFORM HOLDING A BOW AND ARROW]_

* * *

 _To:  
_ _From:  
_ _Subject: RE: Lease_

 _I've signed and dated everything, and I've attached the scanned copy to this email. Let me know if I need anything else._

 _Thanks again so much, Tommy. You've been so helpful with all the apartment stuff. I really owe you one._

 _Felicity_

* * *

 _[group chat]_

 _TOMMY MERLYN: Yo doc! When are you pulling up to town?_

 _FELICITY SMOAK: Google maps says 1430 tomorrow_

 _THEA QUEEN: In non killing people time please?_

 _FELICITY SMOAK: 230 pm_

 _TOMMY MERLYN: K we're bringing reinforcements!_

 _THEA QUEEN: What he means by that is liquor…_

 _FELICITY SMOAK: -_-_

* * *

 _To: oliver. .mil  
_ _From:  
_ _Subject: Moved in! (pics included)_

 _I'm officially a Starling City resident!_

 _Moving wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I didn't bring much, since I gave away a lot of my clothes (something your sister is appalled by). Most of it was just computer parts and all my books. Tommy gallantly offered to carry the boxes with all the books, then immediately complained about it._

 _Thea and I spent most of the first day furniture shopping while Tommy was working at his club. But according to Thea, the furniture wasn't enough so of course we spent the next day looking for rugs and paintings and statues that wouldn't freak me out in the middle of the night when I wander into the kitchen for a glass of water. So now it feels like I actually live here._

 _But you wouldn't believe the view here, Oliver. Honestly, the pictures don't do it enough justice. It's this gorgeous loft apartment with high ceilings. The entire wall opposite the entrance is one gigantic window with a terrace that has an unimpeded view of the Starling City skyline. It reminds me of the helipad back at Landstuhl. It's especially breathtaking at night._

 _I really can't wait for you to see it._

 _I have to wrap up this email. Tommy's planning my housewarming party with about a thousand strangers and he needs me to give my opinion even though he's not going to listen to it. Whatever._

 _Love,  
_ _Felicity_

 _[ATTACHED PHOTO OF LIVING ROOM]  
_ _[ATTACHED PHOTO OF DINING ROOM]  
_ _[ATTACHED PHOTO OF TERRACE AND SKYLINE AT NIGHT]  
_ _[ATTACHED PHOTO OF BEDROOM]  
_ _[ATTACHED SELFIE OF THEA, TOMMY AND FELICITY MAKING FUNNY FACES]_

* * *

 _To:  
_ _From: oliver. .mil  
_ _Subject: RE: Moved in! (pics included)_

 _Congratulations! You survived the move!_

 _By the looks of those pictures, I'm pretty sure I know where that place is. It's the Emmerson Building downtown, just a few blocks away from the hospital, isn't it? I always loved that place. I was considering renting an apartment there after I graduated high school and didn't know what I was going to do with my life._

 _Your apartment is beautiful, but nowhere near as beautiful as you._

 _We're nearing the end of our deployment here. There's always a palpable, hopeful vibe on base when we're getting ready to redeploy. Everyone starts talking about what they're going to do the minute they get home. A lot of it is pretty dirty. If you know what I mean._

 _For me, though, it's a little bittersweet. This is my last deployment. It's my last time in country with these guys. I've been through three tours, and while they each had their challenges, they've also been fun in their own ways. I got to meet new people, experience different cultures and feel like I'm making a difference._

 _And of course, I got to meet you._

 _I'm very ready to be out of the Army, but I don't feel like I'm done fighting yet. I feel like I have more fight in me. I have a bigger impulse to make a difference and to make the community I live in feel safer._

 _I don't know what I'm going to do when I get back to Starling, but I have a feeling this drive will help me figure it out._

 _By the way, the return ceremony is Nov. 24 at Fort Campbell. Let Thea and Tommy know as well._

 _Just a few more days._

 _Love,  
_ _Oliver_


	15. Chapter 15

There have been very, very few moments in my life when I was willingly awake in the morning. In fact, I'd venture to say that I have never been willingly awake at four in the morning.

This was the very first time.

"Stop fidgeting," Tommy complained as he pressed a firm hand on my bouncing knee. "You're making me spill my coffee."

"Sorry." But the minute he lifted his hand, my knee started bouncing again.

I wasn't the only one. The cavernous Hangar 7 was packed to the brim with breathless families. Some held signs, some clutched balloons and others cradled flowers in their arms. Excited children ran around, waving tiny American flags glued to toothpicks. A band of seven poor souls sat on a stage at the very front of the room, cycling through the bland songs of their repertoire, like "Smoke on the Water" and "The Tide is High." In a hidden corner, volunteers handed out styrofoam cups filled with weak coffee and stale cookies donated by local grocery stores.

It was a far different atmosphere to the last coming home ceremony I'd been to.

Thea, Tommy and I had arrived in Nashville the night before. After just four hours of sleep, we got up at two to drive an hour to get to Fort Campbell where we were escorted by grumpy gate guards to a parking lot almost a mile away to take a freezing cold bus to the hangar.

Despite all of these less than ideal circumstances, I was buzzing with excitement.

He was almost here. After two months we would once again be in the same room. I'd get to touch him, hold him, gaze into his eyes and kiss him.

He was almost home, and he was still alive. Nothing in the world could have dampened my mood.

"God, why did we have to get up so early if they weren't coming in until 4:30?" Tommy grumbled.

Thea and I both shrugged. Unlike him, we were a little more content to go coffeeless. The thought of seeing Oliver again was enough of a jump start for the both of us.

"Will we be able to take him home immediately afterward?" Thea asked.

"I think he'll have to go through a quick de-brief, but after that we can take him home," I answered. Both of my knees jumped at the thought of taking him back with us to Starling, and my heart fluttered again.

Tommy scowled. "Would you _stop_."

"Sorry."

A few more restless minutes passed. I watched as children raced each other up and down the bleachers, as families chattered excitedly among themselves, as wives and girlfriends combed through their hair, checked their makeup and adjusted their clothes. They were all dressed to the nines, waiting for their men to spot them and fall in love once again.

The thought made me smile.

"Ladies and gentlemen," a voice boomed over the loudspeaker, "the flight is ten minutes away. I repeat, the flight is ten minutes away. If you would like to head out to the flightline, you will see your soldiers soon."

The room erupted with cheers and claps, and as if on cue, everyone around us stood up. We followed the crowd outside to a sectioned off area by the hangar. With Tommy's help, we pushed our way to the front, behind the waist-high metal gates.

"Can you see anything?" Thea asked, scanning the skies.

"No," Tommy answered. "It's too dark." This time he was the one fidgeting, and we all huddled in closer together, trying to keep warm in the cold November wind.

We stood there impatiently bouncing up and down on the balls of our feet, and I rubbed my mittened hands together, trying to keep myself warm. Thoughts of Oliver definitely helped. I tried imagining what he was doing, if he was as excited as I was.

There was a part of me that feared his feelings might have changed for me in the two months he was away. It's all well and good to tell someone you love them right before you're about to head off to war. Once he landed back on safe soil, would those feelings remain?

"You look worried all of a sudden," Thea commented. "Are you OK?"

I nodded, not saying anything. I didn't want to give voice to my thoughts, in case they would come true.

But Thea didn't seem to need me to talk. She was some sort of mind reader when she said, "Don't be nervous. I've never seen him more in love with anyone. The way he looks at you isn't something you get over. Trust me."

A slow smile bloomed over my face and I leaned into her and wrapped my arms around her waist. We squeezed each other, a sign of quiet solidarity and gratitude.

"There!" someone in the crowd shouted. "It's there! It's coming!"

In unison, everyone scanned the skies, looking for the telltale plane. Then, sure enough, we saw the lights slowly descending on the horizon and the shadowy plane loomed larger and larger until it finally landed on the tarmac one hundred yards in front of us.

The crowd exploded in cheers and applause and my heart sped back up.

An excruciating amount of time passed before the doors finally opened and the soldiers filed out of the plane, one-by-one, their duffles and their weapons draped over their shoulders.

The line passed in front of us, each of the soldiers waving to their families. Everyone in the crowd at that point had completely lost their minds, shouting, screaming, clanging their bells and whistles as loud as possible.

"Do you see him?" Tommy shouted over the din.

"No," Thea answered.

My eyes scanned over the coming line before they finally landed on him.

"There!" I shouted, pointing. He was still fifty yards away, but I knew his walk better than anyone.

We started screaming and shouting as he got closer and closer. Finally when he was within earshot, the three of us yelled in unison, "WELCOME HOME, OLIVER!"

He looked over at us, and there it was. The beautiful face I'd been missing for the past two months. He was here. He was safe. He was alive.

Oliver's blue eyes connected with mine and for a split second the world ceased to exist. The din of the crowd was no more. We were twenty yards away from one another, but we were the only people in the world. He was there, in my blood, humming in my skin. He was there, and he was mine.

In that moment, his face split into a gorgeous grin. My own face reflected his and tears immediately sprang to my eyes. There was not a doubt in my mind. He was still in love with me, and I was still very much in love with him.

The moment passed and he was joining the rest of his men on the other side of the building, turning in their weapons and preparing for a quick de-brief. I was pulled back into the present by Tommy and Thea shaking my arms on either side, jumping up and down in excitement.

"He's home! HE'S HOME!" Thea screamed. Tears streamed down her eyes and I couldn't help but laugh. At least I wasn't the only one crying.

Eventually all of the soldiers had made it off the plane and we were ushered back inside the hangar while the soldiers gathered around each other, waiting for the last commands from their officer.

Tommy, Thea and I settled back in our spots on the very bottom bleachers, waiting impatiently for the soldiers to come back in. Soon enough the hangar doors slid open and the band started playing a fanfare for the triumphant return. The phalanx of soldiers came marching through, led by their commanding officer, staring straight ahead. When they came to a stop, they continued staring straight ahead, standing completely at attention.

The rest of the ceremony was a blur, and I wasn't paying any attention. Someone came to give the invocation, another someone gave a short speech about duty or whatever. I didn't care. All I cared about was Oliver. Every molecule in my body wanted to rush the block to find him and throw my arms around him. But soon enough the band played the Screaming Eagles song, then the Army song and finally — finally — the commanding officer released his troops.

With an almighty yell, all the family members rushed onto the floor, desperate to find their soldier. But I knew where Oliver was. It was like my body was trained on his and I zeroed in on his location, right in the middle of the room.

We pushed through the crowd to where he stood, waiting for us with that incredible smile of his. Thea launched herself at her brother, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck and crying so loud I could almost hear it over the happy cacophony all around me. Then it was Tommy's turn, and the two exchanged hearty handshakes and a warm embrace.

Then finally, it was my turn.

For once in my life, I felt struck speechless. He was there. After eight weeks of waiting, here he was. In front of me. Still alive and not in a flag-draped casket. He kept his promise and he came home alive and whole.

One moment he was standing three feet away from me. The next moment he was right there, just inches from me, wrapping his arms around my torso in such a tight hug I couldn't breathe. But that was all right. I hugged him back with equal fervor.

"You're home," I whispered, my eyes closed and relishing the feeling of being in his arms.

He squeezed me tighter. "I'm home," he agreed.

We eventually pulled away, and I realized by the wet spots I left on his shoulder that I had been crying. But I didn't get the chance to examine it very closely because in an instant his lips were on mine and I was floating. It didn't matter that his best friend and his sister were there watching. It didn't matter that we were in the middle of a crowded hangar, other families celebrating the safe return of their own loved ones.

Our lips moved over one another and together, in unison. Electricity buzzed in every skin cell on my body. I could feel my heartbeat pounding to the same rhythm of his pulse. The anticipation had built so much that when the moment came I felt as if I were exploding in complete, incredible euphoria.

I didn't ever want this feeling to end.

His lips left mine, but he kept me in his arms, his forehead pressed to mine.

"Felicity?"

"Hmm?" My eyes were still closed, reveling in the sensation of having him home.

"I have a question to ask you."

I gently brushed the tip of my nose over his. "What is it?"

He pulled away and my immediate reaction was to pull him back in. But I restrained myself as I watched him reach into his left breast pocket and pull something out.

It was a tiny black box.

"I bought this while I was over there," he said, his voice wavering with emotion. "I had every intention of waiting until we'd been dating a little longer, but...I just can't."

My heart jumped in my throat when I realized what was happening. A distant corner of my brain registered that Thea was squealing next to me, but all the rest of me was focusing on Oliver as he crouched to the ground on one knee. Then, slowly, he pulled the box open to reveal the contents.

Nestled into its foam mount was the most beautiful ring I'd ever set eyes on before. It was a thin, silver band cradling a square-cut emerald, framed by six tiny diamonds, three on each side. It sparkled in the bright lights of the hangar, like the sun reflecting its light on the white Nevada sand.

"Felicity Meghan Smoak," Oliver whispered. "Will you marry me?"

Words had escaped me. My heart was pounding loud enough for the entire hangar to hear.

Then the dam on my joy broke and I burst into tears.

"Yes!" I shouted jubilantly. "Yes! YES!"

Tommy and Thea whooped and screamed and in an instant Oliver was back on his feet, his arms around my waist. He picked me up and twirled me around before kissing me again. I returned it with all the fervor I had.

We were together. We were one.

We were whole.


End file.
